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■ J ro'i-' 




CHANGING WINDS 


A NOVEL 


BY^ 

ST. JOHN ERVINE 


Knn fork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1920 


All rights reserved 


WOODRIDGE 


C 


Copyright, 1917, 

By ST. JOHN G. ERVINE. 


Set up and electrotyped Published February, 1917. 



TRANSFHR 

ft ft PUBLIC lib ra r y 
SfilPT. l#,l©40 


352327 


t.tqt’B.IOT of COLUIvtBia. PROPBRT'Y 

FKOM f BBUO lbbab* 


TO 

THE MEMORY OF RUPERT BROOKE 






The translations from the Gaelic on pages 77 and 78 
were made by the late P. H. Pearse, who was executed in 
Dublin for his part in the Easter Rebellion. The transla- 
tions appeared in New Ir eland ^ and I am indebted to the 
Editor of that review for permission to reprint them here. 






THE FIRST BOOK 

OF 

CHANGING WINDS 


There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter, 

And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after, 

Frost, with a gesture, stays the winds that dance 
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white. 

Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, 

A width, a shining peace, under the night. 

Rupebt Brooke. 


•V 


I 


CHANGING WINDS 


THE FIRST CHAPTER 
1 

It would be absurd to say of Mr. Quinn that he was an ill- 
tempered man, but it would also be absurd to say that he 
was of a mild disposition. William Henry Matier, a 
talker by profession and a gardener in his leisure moments, 
summarised Mr. Quinn’s character thus: ^‘He’d ate the 
head off you, thon lad would, an’ beg your pardon the 
minute after!” That, on the whole, was a just and ade- 
quate description of Mr. Quinn, and certainly no one had 
better qualifications for forming an estimate of his em- 
ployer’s character than William Henry Matier; for he 
had spent many years of his life in Mr. Quinn’s service and 
had, on an average, been discharged from it about ten 
times per annum. 

Mr. Quinn, the younger son of a poor landowner in the 
north of Ireland, had practised at the Bar without success. 
His failure to maintain himself at the law was not due to 
ignorance of the statutes of the land or to any inability on 
his part to distort their meaning: it was due solely to the 
fact that he was a Unionist and a gentleman. His Union- 
ism, in a land where politics take the place of religion, pre- 
vented him from receiving briefs from Nationalists, and his 
gentlemanliness made it impossible for him to accept briefs 
from the Unionists ; for if an Irish lawyer be a Unionist, he 
must play the lickspittle and tomtoady to the lords and 
ladies of the Ascendency and be ready at all times and on 

3 


4 


CHANGING WINDS 


all occasions to deride Ireland and befoul his countrymen in 
the presence of the English people. 

“I’d rather eat dirt, ’ ’ Mr. Quinn used to say, ‘ ‘ than earn 
my livin’ that way ! ’ ’ 

He contrived, however, to win prosperity by his marriage 
to Miss Catherine Clotworthy, the only daughter of a Bel- 
fast mill-owner : a lady of watery spirit who irked her hus- 
band terribly because she affected an English manner and 
an English accent. He was very proud of his Irish blood 
and he took great pride in using Ulster turns of speech. 
Mrs. Quinn, whose education had been ‘ ‘ finished ’ ’ at 
Brighton, frequently urged him to abandon his “broad” 
way of talking, but the principal effect she had on him was 
to intensify the broadness of his accent. 

“I do wish you wouldn’t say Ai/e,” she would plead, 
“when you mean Yes/” 

And then he would roar at her. “What! Bleat like a 
damned Englishman ! Where ’s your wit, woman ? ’ ’ 

Soon after the birth of her son, she died, and her concern, 
therefore, with this story is slight. It is sufficient to say of 
her that she inherited a substantial fortune from her father 
and that she passed it on, almost unimpaired, to her hus- 
band, thus enabling him to live in comfortable disregard of 
the law as a means of livelihood. He had a small estate in 
County Antrim, which included part of the village of 
Ballymartin, and there he passed his days in agricultural 
pursuits. 

2 

Mr. Quinn, as has been stated, was a Unionist, and, in 
spite of his Catholic name, a Protestant ; but he had a poor 
opinion of his Unionist neighbours who, so he said, were far 
more loyal to England than England quite liked. He hated 
the English accent . . . “finicky bleatin’,” he called it 
. . . and declared, though he really knew better, that all 
Englishmen spoke with a Cockney intonation. “A lot of 
h-droppers,” he called them, adding, “God gave them a 


CHANGING WINDS 


5 


decent language, but they haven't the gumption to talk it !” 
The Oxford voice, in his opinion, was educated Cockney, 
uglier, if possible, than the uneducated brand. 

An Englishman, hearing Mr. Quinn talk in this fashion, 
might pardonably have imagined that he was listening to a 
fanatical Nationalist, a dynamiting Fenian, but if, being a 
Liberal, he had ventured to advocate Home Eule for Ireland 
in Mr. Quinn’s presence, he would speedily have found that 
he was in error. ‘‘Damn the fear!” Mr. Quinn would say 
when people charged him with being a Home Euler. The 
motive of his Unionism, however, was neither loyalty to 
England nor terror of Eome : it was wholly and unasham- 
edly a matter of commerce. “The English bled us for 
centuries,” he would say, “an’ it’s only fair we should 
bleed them. We’ve got our teeth in their skins, an’ they’re 
shellin’ out their money gran’! That’s what the Union’s 
for — to make them keep on shellin’ out their money. An’ 
instead of tollin’ the people to bite deeper an’ get more 
money out of them, the fools o’ Nationalists is tollin’ them 
to take their teeth out! Never,” he would exclaim pas- 
sionately, “never, while there’s a shillin’ in an English- 
man ’s pocket ! ’ ^ 

Mr. Quinn, of course, treated every Englishman he met 
with courtesy, for he was an Irish gentleman, and he had 
sometimes been heard to speak affectionately of some per- 
son of English birth. The chief result of this civility, 
conjoined with the ferocity of his political statements, was 
that his English friends invariably spoke of him as “a 
typical Irishman.” They looked upon him as so much 
comic relief to the more serious things of their own lives, 
and seemed constantly to expect him to perform some 
amusing antic, some innately Celtic act of comic folly. At 
such times, Mr. Quinn felt as if he could annihilate an 
Englishman. 

“Ah, well,” he would say, restraining lymself, “we all 
know what the English are like, God help them ! ’ ’ 

It was because of his strong feeling for Ireland and Irish 


6 


CHANGING WINDS 


things that he decided to have his son, Henry, educated in 
Ireland. ''Anyway,'’ he said to the lad, "you'll have an 
Irish tongue, whatever else you have!" He sent the boy 
to a school in the County Armagh and left him there until 
he discovered that he was not being educated at all. He 
had questioned Henry on the history and geography of 
Ireland one day, and had found to his horror that while 
Henry could tell him exactly where Popocatepetl was to 
be found, and knew that Mount Everest was 29,002 feet 
high, and could name the kings of England and the dates 
of their accession as easily as he could recite the Lord’s 
Prayer, he had no knowledge of the whereabouts or char- 
acter of Lurigedan, a hill in the County Antrim, and could 
tell him nothing of the Red Earls and the beautiful queens 
of Ireland. He knew something that was true, and much 
that was not, of Queen Elizabeth and King Alfred, but 
nothing, true or false, of Deirdre and Red Hugh O’Neill. 

"What the hell’s the good of knowin’ about Popocate- 
petl,’’ Mr. Quinn shouted at him, "when you don’t know 
the name of a hill on your own doorstep !’’ 

Lurigedan was hardly "on his own doorstep,’’ and Mr. 
Quinn himself only knew of it because he had once, very 
breathlessly, climbed to its summit, but an Irish hill was 
of more consequence to him than the highest mountain in 
the world; and so he descended upon the master of the 
school, a dreepy individual with a tendency to lament the 
errors of Rome, and damned him from tip to toe so effec- 
tually that the alarmed pedagogue gladly consented to the 
immediate termination of Henry’s career at his establish- 
ment. Thereafter, Henry was educated in England, for 
Mr. Quinn did not propose to sacrifice efficiency to 
patriotism. 

"An’ if you come back talkin’ like a damned Cockney,’’ 
he said to his son as he bade good-bye to him, " I ’ll cut the 
legs off you!" 

When Henry came home in the holidays, Mr. Quinn 
would spend hours in testing his tongue. 


CHANGING WINDS 


7 


‘‘Sound your rs,” he would say repeatedly, because he 
regarded one’s ability to say the letter r as a test of a 
man’s control of the English language. “If you were to 
listen to an Englishman talkin’ on the telephone, you’d 
hear him yelpin’ ^Ah yoh thahf* just like a big buck nig- 
ger, ’til you’d be sick o’ listenin’ to him! Say, ‘Are you 
there ? Henry son!” 

And Henry would say “Are you there, father?” very 
gravely. 

“That’s right,” the old man would exclaim, listening 
with delight to the rolling rs. “Always sound your rs 
whatever you do. I’ll not own you if you come home 
sayin ^Ah yoh thah?^ when you mean ‘Are you there?^ 
Do you mind me, now?” 

“Yes, father.” 

“Well, be heedin’ me, then! Now, how are you on the 
h&. Are you as steady on them as you were when you 
were home before?” 

Then Henry would protest. “But, father,” he would 
say, “they don’t all drop their /is. It’s only the common 
ones that drop them ! . . . 

“They’re all common, Henry . . . the whole lot, common 
as dirt!” Mr. Quinn retorted once to that, and then began 
to tell hfs son how the English people had lost the habits 
and instincts of gentlemen in the eighteenth century . . . 
“where Ireland still is, my son!” . . . and had become 
money-grubbers. “The English,” he said, lying back in 
his chair and delivering his sentences as if he were a mon- 
arch pronouncing decrees, “ceased to be gentlemen on the 
day that Hargreaves invented the spinnin ’-jenny, and land- 
lords gave way to mill-owners.” He stopped for a second 
or two and then continued as if an idea had only just 
come into his head. “An’ it was proper punishment for 
Hargreaves,” he said, “that the English let him die in the 
workhouse. Proper punishment. What the hell did he 
want to invent the thing for? ...” 

Henry looked up, startled by the sudden anger that 


8 


CHANGING WINDS 


swept over his father, replacing the oracular banter with 
which he had begun his discourse on the decadence of 
manners in England. 

“But, father,’’ he said, ‘^you aren’t against machinery, 
are you ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, I am,” Mr. Quinn replied, banging the arm of his 
chair with his fist. “I’d smash every machine in the 
world, if I were in authority.” 

“That’s absurd, father. I mean, what would become of 
progress?” 

Mr. Quinn leaped out of his chair and strode up and 
down the room. “Progress! Progress!” he exclaimed, 
“ D ’ye think machines are progress ? D ’ye think a factory 
is progress? Some of you young chaps think you’re mak- 
in’ progress when you’re only makin’ changes. I tell you, 
Henry, the only thing that is capable of progression is the 
human soul, and machines can’t develop that!** He came 
back to his seat as he said this and sat down, but he did not 
lie back as he had done before. He sat forward, gazing 
intently at his son, and spoke with a curious passion such 
as Henry had never heard him use before. “Look here, 
Henry!” he said, “there was a girl in the village once 
called Lizzie McCamley ... a fine bit of a girl, too, 
big and strong, an’ full of fun, an’ she got tired of the 
village. Her father was a labourer, an’ all she could see 
in front of her was the life of a labourer’s wife. Well, it 
isn’t much of a life, that, an’ Lizzie’s mother had a poor 
life eVen for a labourer’s wife because McCamley boozed. 
I don’t blame Lizzie for wantin’ somethin’ better than 
that. I’d have despised her if she hadn’t wanted some- 
thin’ better. But what did she do? She had an uncle in 
Belfast workin’ in your grandfather’s mill, an’ she came 
to me an’ she asked me to use my influence with your 
grandfather to get her a job in the mill. An’ I did. An’ 
by God, I’m sorry for it! I’ll rue it ’til my dyin’ day, I 
can tell you!” 

“But why, father?” 


CHANGING WINDS 


9 


'‘Your grandfather gave her a job in the weavin' room 
of his mill. Do you know what that’s like, Henry?” 
Henry shook his head. He had never been inside a linen- 
mill. “The linen has to be woven in a moist atmosphere, 
or else it’d become brittle an’ so it wouldn’t be fine,” Mr. 
Quinn went on; “an’ the atmosphere is kept moist by 
lettin’ steam escape from pipes into the room where the 
linen is bein’ woven — a damp, muggy, steamy atmosphere, 
Henry ... an’ Lizzie McCamley left this village . . . left 
work in the fields there to go up to Belfast an’ work in that 
for ten shillin’s a week ! An’ that’s what people calls prog- 
ress! I wish you could see her now — half rotten with 
disease, her that was the healthiest girl in the place before 
she went away. She’s always sick, that girl, an’ she can’t 
eat anythin’ unless her appetite is stimulated with stuff 
like pickles. She’s anaemic an’ debilitated, an’ the last 
time I saw her, she’d got English cholera. . . . She mar- 
ried a fellow that was as sick as herself, an’ she had a child 
that wasn’t fit to be born ... it died, thank God! . . . 
an’ then she went back to her work an’ became sicker. 
An’ she’ll go on like that ’til she dies, a rotten, worn-out 
woman, the mother of rotten children when she ought to 
have had fine healthy brats, an’ could have had them too, 
if it hadn’t been for this damned progress we’re all 
makin’!” 

Henry did not reply to his father. He did not know 
what to reply. His mind was still in the pliable state, and 
he found that he was being infected by his father ’s passion. 
But he had been taught at Kumpell’s to believe in Inven- 
tion, in Progress by the Development of Machinery, and so 
his mind reeled a little under this sudden onslaught on his 
beliefs. 

“Well,” said Mr. Quinn. “Is that your notion of prog- 
ress, Henry? Makin’ fine linen out of healthy girls?” 

“No, father, of course not. Only! ...” 

Mr. Quinn stood up, and caught hold of his son’s shoul- 
der. “Come over to the window, Henry!” he said, and 


10 


CHANGING WINDS 


they walked across the room together. “Look out there/’ 
he said, pointing towards the fields that stretched to the 
foot of the hills. That’s fine, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. 

“It’s very beautiful, father,” Henry replied, looking 
across the fields of corn and clover and the pastures where 
the silken-sided cattle browsed and fiocks of sheep cropped 
the short grass. 

“It’s land, Henry!” said Mr. Quinn, proudly. “You 
can do without machines in the long run, but you can’t do 
without 

3 

“An’ what do you think a mill-owner ’d make of it, 
Henry?” Mr, Quinn said as they stood there gazing 
on the richness of the earth. Near at hand, they could 
hear the sound of a lawn-mower, leisurely worked by Will- 
iam Henry Matier, and while they waited for him to come 
into view, a great fat thrush fiew down from a tree and 
seized a snail and beat it against a stone until its shell was 
broken. . . . 

“I suppose he’d spoil it, father!” Henry answered. 

“Spoil it!” Mr. Quinn exclaimed. “Damn it, Henry, 
he’d desecrate it! He’d tear up my cornfields and 
meadows and put factories and mills in their place ! 
That’s what he’d do!” He turned sideways and leant 
against the lintel of the window so that he was looking at 
his son. “There was a fellow came to see me once,” he 
said, ’^‘from London. A speculatin’ chap, an’ he wanted 
me to put capital into a scheme he had on. Do you know 
what sort of a scheme it was, Henry?” 

“No, father!” 

“He wanted to develop the mineral resources of the 
County Wicklow, an’ he wanted me to lend him money to 
do it. He said that some Germans had surveyed the whole 
district, an’ there was an immense fortune just waitin’ 
to be torn out of the earth. ... I could hardly keep 
my feet off his backside! ‘Do you want to turn Glenda- 


CHANGING WINDS 


11 


lough into a place like Wigan?’ I said to him. ‘It’s all in 
the interests of progress,’ says he. . . . No, I didn’t give 
him any of my money. I was as civil to him as I could 
be, an’ he never knew how near he was to his death that 

day. ...” 

Mr. Quinn’s anger evaporated, and he began to laugh 
to himself as he thought of the difficulty he had had in 
restraining his rage against the speculator and how fright- 
ened that person would have been had he known how angry 
he had made him. 

“He was a little smooth chap,” he said, “with smooth 
hair an’ smooth clothes an’ a smooth voice. You could 
hardly tell it was hair, it was that smooth. You’d nearly 
think somebody had painted it on his skull. He couldn ’t 
make me out when I said I’d rather starve than let a half- 
penny of my money be used to make a mess of Glenda- 
lough, an’ he talked about the necessity of havin’ a broad 
outlook on the world. I suppose he went away an’ told 
everybody that I was a reactionary an’ a bad landlord. 
Oh, I can hear him spoutin’ away about me ... he 
got into parliament soon after that, an’ used to denounce 
landlords an’ blether away about progress. An’ I daresay 
everybody that listens to him thinks I’m a stupid fellow, 
standin’ in the way of everything. I’m a landlord, an’ so, 
of course, I’m obsolete and tyrannical an’ thick-headed, 
an’ all that, but I wouldn’t treat one of my labourers the 
way your grandfather treated his for the wide world. 
Mind you, he was a religious man ... I don’t mean 
that he pretended to be religious ... he really was re- 
ligious, after a fashion . . . wouldn’t have missed goin’ 
to church or sayin’ his prayers night an’ mornin’ for a 
mint of money ... an’ yet there didn’t seem to him to 
be anything wrong in lettin’ men an’ women make money 
for him in that . . . that disgustin’ way. I can’t under- 
stand that. I ’m damned if I can ! ’ ’ 

Something stirred uneasily in Henry’s mind. He be- 
came acutely conscious of the principal source of his 


12 


CHANGING WINDS 


father’s income, and he remembered things that had been 
said to him by Gilbert Farlow at Rumpell’s. Gilbert Far- 
low was his chief friend at Rumpell’s, the English school 
to which he had been sent after his experience at Armagh, 
and Gilbert called himself an hereditary socialist because 
his father had been a socialist before him. (“He was one 
of the first members of the Fabian Society,” Gilbert used 
to say proudly.) Gilbert had strong, almost violent, views 
on Personal Responsibility for General Wrongs. He al- 
ways referred to rich people as “oligarchs,” or “the rot- 
ters who live on rent and interest” and declared that it 
was impossible for them to escape from the responsibility 
for the social chaos by asserting that they, individually, 
had kind hearts and had never been known to underpay 
or overwork any one. Remembering Gilbert ’s views, 
Henry could not help thinking that it was all very well for 
his father to denounce the mill in that fashion, but after 
all he was living on the money that was made in it. . . . ’ 

“But, father,” he said, hesitatingly, “haven’t we got 
grandfather’s money now . . . and the mill! ...” 

“No, not the mill, Henry. Your grandfather turned 
that into a limited company, an’ your mother sold her 
shares in it. I told her to sell them!” 

Henry’s conscience still pricked him. It seemed to him 
that selling the shares was very like running away from 
the responsibility. 

“But all the same,” he said, “we’ve got money that was 
made but of the mill by grandfather ...” 

“So we have, Henry,” Mr. Quinn replied good-tem- 
peredly, “an’ we’re makin’ a better use of it than he did. 
Some one’s got to use it, an’ I’m doin’ the best I can with 
it. You’ve only got to look at my land to see how well I’ve 
used the money. It’s better land than it was when I got 
it, isn’t it?” Henry nodded his head. Even he knew that 
much. “I’ve enriched it an’ drained it an’ improved it 
in ways that’ll benefit them that come after me . . . not 
me, but you an’ your children, Henry ... an’ that’s a 


CHANGING WINDS 


13 


good use to make of it. IVe planted trees that I’ll never 
reap a ha’penny from, an’ I’ve spent money on experi- 
ments that did me no good but helped to increase knowl- 
edge about land. Look at the labourers’ cottages I’ve 
built, an’ the plots of land I’ve given them. Aren’t they 
good? Didn’t I put up the best part of the money to build 
the new school because the old one was lettin’ in the wind 
an’ rain?” 

Henry’s knowledge of sociology was not sufficient to 
enable him to cope with these arguments . . . there was 
no Gilbert Harlow at his elbow to prompt him . . . and 
so he collapsed. 

“I suppose you’re right, father,” he said. 

Suppose I’m right,” Mr. Quinn replied. course 

I ’m right ! ’ ’ 

“I know well,” he continued after he had fumed for a 
few moments, “there’s people . . . socialists an’ radicals 
an’ people like that . . . makes out that landlords are the 
curse of the world. They think we’re nothin’ in compari- 
son with mill-owners an’ that sort, but I tell you, Henry, 
whatever we are an’ whatever we were, we’re better than 
the people that have taken our place. We didn’t tear up 
the earth an’ cover it with slag-heaps or turn good rivers 
into stinkin’ sewers. We didn’t pollute the rivers with 
filth an’ poison the fish!” He turned suddenly to Henry 
and said in a quieter tone, “You’ve never seen Wigan, 
have you, Henry?” 

“No, father.” 

“Well, you’d think by the look of it, it was made on the 
seventh day . . . when God rested. Landlords didn’t do 
that, Henry, or anything as bad as that. It was mill- 
owners that did it. Oh, I know well enough that land- 
lords were not all they ought to have been, but I ’m certain 
of this, that labourers on the land were healthier under 
landlords than they are under mill-owners, and even if we 
w^eren’t as good to the labourers as we might have been, 
at least we had respect for God’s world, an’ I never met a 


14 


CHANGING WINDS 


mill-owner yet that had respect for anything but a bank- 
book. I’ve been in Lancashire an’ I’ve listened ta these 
mill-owners ... I’ve listened to them talkin’, an’ I’ve 
listened to them eatin’ an’ drinkin’ ... an’ they talked 
‘brass’ an’ they thought ‘brass,’ an’ I’m damned if they 
didn’t drink ‘brass.’ That’s characteristic of them. They 
call money ‘brass.’ Brass! Do you think they care for 
the fine look of things or an old house or a picture or books 
or anything that’s decent? No, Henry ... all they care 
for is ‘brass,’ an’ that’s what’s the matter with the English 
. . . they think too much about money . . . easy money 
... an’ they think so much about gettin’ it that none of 
them have any time to think of how they’ll spend it when 
they do get it. An’ they just fool it away! Eat it away, 
drink it away! An’ then they have to go to Buxton an’ 
Matlock an’ Harrogate to sweat the muck out of their 
blood!” 

Henry reminded his father of the bloods and bucks and 
macaronis of the eighteenth century . . . the last of the 
English gentlemen. 

“After all, father, they weren’t so very much better 
than the lot you’re denouncing!” 

“Yes, they were. They had the tradition of gentlemen 
behind them. They were drunkards and gamblers and 
women-hunters an’ Lord knows what not, but behind it all, 
Henry, they had the tradition of gentlemen, an’ that saved 
them from things that a mill-owner does as a matter of 
course. An’ anyway, their theory was right. They 
thought more of spendin’ money than of makin’ it, an’ 
that was right. It isn’t makin’ money that matters . . . 
any fool can do that ... it’s spendin’ money that matters. 
You’re less likely to make a mess of the world when you’re 
spendin’, than when you’re makin’, money, an’ the Eng- 
lish ’ll find that out yet. God’ll not forget in a hurry the 
way they tore up their good land an’ made dirty, stinkin’ 
towns out of it, an’ by the Holy 0, He’ll make them suffer 
for it. If I was an Englishman, I wouldn’t want any one 


CHANGING WINDS 


15 


to see places like Wigan an’ the to’^vns where they dig coal 
an’ make pottery ... I’d ... I’d be ashamed to look 
God in the face when I had mind of them. ...” 

4. 

Late that night, long after Henry had gone to bed, Mr. 
Quinn came to his room and wakened him. 

“What is it, father?” Henry said, starting up in alarm. 

“It’s all right, son,” Mr. Quinn relied. “I’m sorry 
I startled you. I’ve been thinkin’ over what I said to you 
this afternoon . . . about machinery. You’re not to take 
me too seriously.” 

Henry, his eyes still full of sleep, blinked uncompre- 
hendingly at his father. 

“I mean, son,” Mr. Quinn went on, “that it’d be silly 
to break up every machine in the world. Of course, it 
would! You must have thought I was daft talkin’ like 
that. What I mean is, I’d smash up all the machines that 
make a mess of men an’ women. That’s all. I’m sorry I 
disturbed you, Henry, but I couldn’t bear to think of you 
lyin’ here mebbe thinkin’ I was talkin’ out of the back of 
my neck. I’m not very clever, son ... I’ve a moidhered 
sort of a mind . . . an’ I say things sometimes that aren’t 
what I mean at all. You must be tired out, Henry. Good- 
night to you!” 

* ‘ Good-night, father ! ’ ’ 

Mr. Quinn walked towards the door of the room, shading 
the light of the candle from the draught, but before he had 
reached it, Henry called to him. 

“Father,” he said. 

“Yes, Henry,” Mr. Quinn replied, turning to look at 
his son. 

“You’re a Socialist!” 

“No, I’m not. I’m a Conservative,” said Mr. Quinn, 
and then he went out of the room, closing the door quietly 
behind him. 


16 


CHANGING WINDS 


5 

Many things troubled Mr. Quinn, but the thing that 
troubled him most was his son’s nervousness. Henry, 
when he was a child, would cry with fright during a 
thunderstorm, and he never in after life quite lost the 
sense of apprehension when the clouds blackened. He 
loved horses, but he could not sit on a horse ’s back without 
being haunted by the fear that the animal would run away 
or that he would be thrown from his seat. He could swim 
fairly well, but he was afraid to dive, and he never swam 
far out of his depth without a sensation of alarm that he 
would not be able to return in safety. 

‘‘Your mother was like that,” Mr. Quinn said to him 
once. “She never was in a theatre in her life, ’til I mar- 
ried her. Her father was too religious to let her go to 
such a place, an’ I had the great job to persuade her to go 
with me. I took her to see Henry Irving in Belfast once, 
an’ all the time she kept whisperin’ to me, ‘Suppose I was 
to die now, where ’d I wake up?’ That’s a fact, Henry! 
Your mother was terribly frightened of hell. An’ even 
when she got over that, she was always wonderin’ if it was 
safe to go to a theatre. She’d imagine the place was sure 
to go on fire, an’ then she’d be burned alive or get crushed 
to death or somethin’ like that. I nearly felt scared my- 
self, the way she went on I I wish you weren’t so nervous, 
Henry !” 

They were at Cushendall when Mr. Quinn said this. 
They had ridden over on bicycles intent on a day’s picnic 
by the sea, and soon after they had arrived, Mr. Quinn 
itched to be in the water. They had stripped on the beach, 
and clambered over the rocks to a place where a deep, broad 
pool was separated from the Irish Sea by a thick wedge 
of rock, covered by long, yellow sea-weed. There was a 
swell on the sea, and so Mr. Quinn decided to swim in the 
pool. “This is a good place for a dive,” he said, standing 
on the edge of the flat rock and looking down into the deep 


CHANGING WINDS 


17 


pool, and then he put his hands above his head and, bending 
forward, dived down into the water so finely that there 
was hardly any splash. He came up, puffing and blowing, 
shaking the water from his eyes and hair, and swam up 
and down the pool, now on his back, now on his side, and 
then suddenly with a shout he would curl himself up and 
dive and swim beneath the water, and again come up, red 
and shiny and puffing and blowing and shouting, ‘‘Aw, 
that’s grand! Aw, that’s grand!” He could stand on 
his hands in the water and turn somersaults and find pen- 
nies on the sandy bottom. He loved all sport, but the 
sport that he loved best was swimming. He liked to sit 
on a rock and let great waves come and hit him hearty 
thumps in the back. He liked to bury his face in the water. 
He liked the feel of the water on his body. He liked to 
stand up in the sunshine and watch the drops of water 
glistening on his body. He liked to lie on the sea-weed 
or the sand after his swim and let the sun dry him. “It’s 
great health, this!” he would say, kicking and splashing 
in the sea. 

“Come on,” he shouted to Henry, after he had dived. 

Henry was sitting on the sea-weed, with his arms 
clutched tightly round his shins, shivering a little in the 
wind. 

“You’ll catch your death of cold if you sit there instead 
of jumpin’ in,” his father called to him. “Dive, man! 
That’s a grand place!” 

Henry stood up . . . and then turned away from the 
rock. He caught hold of the sea-weed and slowly lowered 
himself into the water. 

“That wasn’t much of a dive,” his father said, swim- 
ming up to him. 

Henry did not answer. He swam across the pool and 
clambered out on the other side and waited for his father, 
who followed after him. 

“I wish you weren’t so nervous,” Mr. Quinn said a 
second time, as he sat down on the sea-weed beside his son. 


18 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘So do I, father/^ Henry replied, “but I can^t help it. 
I try to make myself not feel afraid, but I just can ’t. If I 
could only not think about it! . . 

“Aye, that’s it, Henry. You think too much. Do you 
mind that bit in Shakespeare about people that think bein ’ 
dangerous. Begod, that’s true! Thin men think, that’s 
what Shakespeare says, an’ he’s right, though I’ve known 
fat men to think, too, but anyway thin men aren’t near the 
swimmers that fat men are. Well, I suppose it’s no use 
complainin’. You can’t help thinkin’ if you have that 
kind of a mind . . . only I wish it didn’t make a coward 
of you!” 

A twist of pain passed over the boy’s face when his 
father said ‘ ‘ Coward, ’ ’ and instantly Mr. Quinn was sorry. 

“I didn’t mean that exactly,” he said very quickly, 
putting out his hand and touching Henry’s bare back. “I 
didn’t mean coward, Henry. I know you’re not that sort 
at all. It’s just nervousness, that’s what it is !” 

He scrambled to his feet as he spoke, and stood for a 
moment or two, slipping about on the wet sea-weed. He 
slapped his big, hairy chest with his hands, and then he 
swung his arms over his head in order to send the blood 
circulating more rapidly through his veins. 

“I wish I were as big and strong as you are, father!” 
said Henry, gazing at his father’s muscular frame. 

“You’re a greedy young rascal,” his father answered. 
“Sure, haven’t you more brains in your wee finger than I 
have in my whole body, an’ what more do you want? It 
would be a poor thing if your father hadn ’t got something 
you haven’t. Come on, now, an’ I’ll swim you a race to 
the end of the pool an’ back, an’ then we must go home.” 

He plunged into the water and swam about, making a 
great noise and splash, and deliberately looking away from 
his son. He was giving him an opportunity to slip into 
the water without being seen to shrink from the dive. 

“Are you cornin’, Henry?” he asked, without looking 
back. 


CHANGING WINDS 


19 


‘‘Yes, father,” the boy replied, standing up and looking 
fearfully into the water. He lifted his hands above his 
head and drew in his breath. He moved forward, half 
shutting his eyes, and poised himself on the edge of the 
rock, ready for the plunge. Then he put his hands down 
again and lowering himself on to the sea-weed, slipped 
slowly into the water and struck out. “I’m coming, 
father!” he said. 

“That’s right, my son, that’s right!” Mr. Quinn replied, 
looking round. 


6 

He did not speak of Henry’s nervousness again, but it 
troubled him none the less. He himself was so fearless, 
so careless of danger, so eager for adventure that he could 
not understand his son’s shrinking from peril. 

“I used to think,” he said to himself one day, “that 
boys took their physique from their mothers an’ their 
brains from their fathers, but it doesn’t seem to have 
worked out like that with Henry. He doesn’t seem to 
have got anything from me. ... It’s a rum business, 
whatever way you look at it.” 


THE SECOND CHAPTER 


1 

Mr. Quinn horror of the English people was neither 
consistent nor rigid. When the Armagh schoolmaster was 
found wanting, Mr. Quinn instantly decided to send Henry 
to RumpelPs, a famous English school, and here Henry 
soon made friends of Ninian Graham and Roger Carey and 
Gilbert Farlow. Gilbert Farlow was the friend for whom 
he cared most, but his affection for Ninian Graham and 
Roger Carey was very strong. Henryks soft nature was 
naturally affectionate, but there had been little opportunity 
in his life for a display of affection. His mother was not 
even a memory to him, for she had died while he was still 
a baby. Old Cassie Arnott had nursed him, but Cassie, 
at an age when it seemed impossible for her to feel any 
emotion for men, had suddenly married and had gone off 
to Belfast. His memory of her speedily faded. Cassie 
was succeeded by Matilda Turnbull, who drank, and was 
dismissed by Mr. Quinn at the end of a fortnight; and 
then came Bridget Fallon. . . . Bridget had the longest 
hold on his memory, but she, too, disappeared and was 
seen no more; for Mr. Quinn came on her suddenly one 
day and found her teaching ‘‘Master Henry’’ to say 
prayers to the Virgin Mary! She had put a scapular 
about his neck and had taught him to make the sign of the 
cross. . . . 

“Take that damned rag off my child’s neck,” Mr. Quinn 
had roared at her, “an’ take yourself off as soon as you 
can pack your box ! ” 

And Bridget, poor, kindly, devout, gentle Bridget, was 
sent weeping away. 


20 


CHANGING WINDS 


21 

Long afterwards, Henry had talked to his father about 
Bridget, and Mr. Quinn had expressed regret for what he 
had said about the scapular. “I had no call to say it was 
a damned rag,’^ he said, “though that^s all it was. It 
meant a lot to her, of course, an’ I suppose she was right 
to try an’ make a Catholic of you. But I’d hate to have 
a son of mine a Catholic, Henry. It’s an unmanly re- 
ligion, only fit for women an’ . . . an’ actors! It’s not 
religion at all . . . it’s funk, Henry, that’s what it is! I 
read ‘The Garden of the Soul’ one time, an’ I’d be 
ashamed to pray the way that book goes on, with their 
‘Jesus, Mercy!’ ‘Mother of God, pity me!’ ‘Holy 
Saints, intercede for me!’ Catholics don’t pray, Henry; 
they whine; and I’ve no use for whinin’. If I can’t go 
to heaven like a man, I ’ll go to hell like one. Anyway, if I 
commit a sin, I ’ll not whine about it, an ’ if God says to me 
on the last day, ‘Did you commit this sin or that sin?’ 
I’ll answer Him to His face an’ say, ‘Yes, God, I did, an’ 
if You’d been a man. You’d have done the same 
Yourself!’ ” 

So it was that, in his childhood, no woman made a last- 
ing impression on Henry’s affectionate nature. No one, 
indeed, filled his affections except his father. Henry’s love 
for his father was unfathomable. Their natures were so 
dissimilar that they never clashed. There were things 
about Henry, his nervousness, his sudden accessions of 
fright, which puzzled Mr. Quinn, and might, had he been 
a smaller man than he was, have made him angry with the 
boy, contemptuous of him; but when Mr. Quinn came 
across some part of Henry’s nature which was incompre- 
hensible to him, he tried first, to understand and then, fail- 
ing that, to be tolerant. “We all have our natures,” he 
used to say to himself, “an’ it’s no use ‘complainin’ because 
people are different. Sure, that’s what makes them inter- 
estin’ an3nvay!” 


22 


CHANGING WINDS 


2 

But Henryks affection for Gilbert Farlow and Ninian 
Graham and Roger Carey was a new affection, a thing that 
came spontaneously to him. There were other boys at 
RumpelFs whom he liked and others for whom he felt 
neither like nor dislike, but just the ordinary tolerance of 
temporary encounters and passing life; and there were a 
few for whom he felt a hatred so venomous that it some- 
times frightened him. There was Cobain, a brutal, thick- 
jawed fellow who thumped small boys whenever they came 
near him, and. there was Mullally ! ... He could not de- 
scribe his feeling for Mullally! It was so strong that he 
could not sit still in the same room with him, could not 
speak civilly to him. And yet Mullally was civil enough to 
him, was anxious even to be friendly with him. There was 
something of a flabby sort in Mullally ’s nature that made 
Henry instinctively angry with him: his vague features, 
his weak, wandering eyes, peering from behind large 
glasses, his tow-coloured hair that seemed to have “washed- 
out,^^ and above all, his squeaky voice that piped on one 
jerky note. . . . 

It was Gilbert Farlow who gave Mullally his nick-name. 
(It was the time of the Boer War, and the nick-name came 
easily enough.) “He isn’t a man,” said Gilbert; “he’s 
a regrettable incident!” 

Gilbert Farlow, though he was the youngest and the 
slightest of the four boys, was the leader of them. He had 
the gift of vivid language. He could cut a man with a 
name as sharply as if it were a knife. He invented new 
oaths for the delight of Ninian Graham, who had a taste 
for strong language but no genius in developing it. It was 
he who appointed Roger to the office of Purse-Bearer be- 
cause Roger was careful. It was he who decided that their 
pocket-money, with small exceptions, should be spent con- 
jointly, and that no money should be spent unless three out 


CHANGING WINDS 


23 


of four consented to the expenditure. (“Damn it, is it my 
money or is it notT’ said Ninian when the rule was pro- 
posed, and “Fined sixpence for cheek!’’ Gilbert replied, 
ordering Roger to collect the sixpence which was then di- 
vided between the three who had not murmured.) It was 
he who declared that ‘ ‘ Henry ’ ’ was too long and ‘ ‘ Quinn, ’ ’ 
too short (though Roger said the words were exactly the 
same length) and insisted on calling Henry “Quinny” 
(which Roger said was actually longer than either of the 
displaced words. “Well, it sounds shorter,” said Gilbert 
decisively). 

Gilbert planned their lives for them. “We’ll all go to 
Cambridge,” he said, “and then well become Great!” 

“Righto!” said Ninian. 

“If any of our people propose to send us to Oxford, 
there’s to be a row! Sloppy asses go to Oxford . . . fel- 
lows like Mullally!” Henry made a terrible grimace at 
the mention of Mullally ’s name and Gilbert, swift to notice 
the grimace, pointed the moral, “Well, Quinny, if your 
guv ’nor tries to send you to Oxford, don’t let him. Re- 
member Mullally, the . . . the boiled worm!” he contin- 
ued, “an’ say you won’t go!” 

“But my father was at Oxford,” said Roger quietly. 

“Your father was a parson and didn’t know any better,” 
Gilbert replied. “And that reminds me, if one of us be- 
comes a parson, the rest of us give him the chuck. Is that 
agreed ? ’ ’ 

Ninian held up both his hands. “Carried unanimous!” 
he said. 

“I don’t know!” Henry objected. “I used to think 
it’d be rather nice to be a parson . . . standing in the pul- 
pit in a surplice and talking like that to people ! ’ ’ 

Gilbert got up from the grass where they were sitting. 
“He’ll have to be scragged,” he said. 

“Righto!” said Ninian, and the three of them seized 
Henry and flung him to the ground and sat on him until he 


CHANGING WINDS 


swore by the blood of his forefathers that he would never, 
never' consent to be a clergyman. ‘‘Or give pi-jaws of 
any sort ! ’ ’ said Gilbert. 

“Lemme go!’’ Henry squeaked, struggling to throw 
them off his back. 

“When you’ve promised! ...” 

“Oh, all right, then!” 

They released him and he stood up and straightened his 
clothes and searched his mind for something of a devastat- 
ing character to say. “Funny ass!” he said at last, and 
then they scragged him again for being cheeky. 

But he would have submitted to any amount of scrag- 
ging from them because they were his friends and because 
he loved Gilbert and because they, too, in their turn sub- 
mitted to being scragged. 


3 

When Henry had been at Kumpell’s for a year, Ninian 
Graham asked him to spend the Easter holidays at his 
home in Devonshire. “I’ll get my mater to write and ask 
you,” he said. Henry hesitated. He had never spent a 
holiday away from home, and he knew that his father liked 
him to return to Ireland whenever he had the chance to do 
so. He himself enjoyed going home, but suddenly, when 
Henry had finished speaking, he felt a strong desire to 
accept this invitation. “I’ll have to ask my father,” he 
replied, and added, “I’d like to, Ninian. Thanks aw- 
f’lly!” 

He had heard his father speak so contemptuously of 
English people that he was almost afraid to ask him for 
permission to accept Ninian ’s invitation. He wondered 
how he would explain his father’s refusal to Ninian who 
was so kind. . . . But his fears were not warranted, for 
Mr. Quinn replied to his letter, urging him to accept the 
invitation. 

Enjoy yourself/^ he wrote. The English are very hos- 


CHANGING WINDS 




pitahle when you get to hnow them, and the only way you 
can get to know them is to go and live in their homes! 
But I^ll expect you to come here in the summer. You can 
bring your friends with you, the whole lot. William 
Henry says there’ll be a grand lot of strawberries and 
goosegogs this year and you can all make yourselves as 
sick as you like on them.” He signed himself, ‘^Your af- 
fectionate Father, Henry Quinn.” 

And so Henry had gone that Easter to Boveyhayne, 
where Mrs. Graham and her daughter Mary lived. Ninian 
and he had travelled by train to Whiteombe where they 
were met by old Widger and driven over hilly country to 
Boveyhayne. There was a long climb out of Whiteombe 
and then a long descent into Boveyhayne, after which the 
road ran on the level to the end of Hayne lane which led 
to the Manor. Before they reached the end of the lane. 
Old Widger turned to them and, pointing with his whip 
in front of him, said, laughingly, “Here be Miss Mary 
waitin^ for ^ee. Master Ninyan!’^ 

Ninian stood up in the carriage and looked ahead. 
“Hilloa, Mary!’’ he shouted, waving his hand, and then, 
before Old Widger had time to pull up, he jumped into 
the road and ran on ahead. “Come on, Quinnyl” he 
shouted, and Henry, suddenly shy, got out of the carriage 
and followed after him. 

“You needn’t wait for us, Widger!” Ninian shouted 
again. “ We ’ll walk home ! ’ ’ 

And Widger, smiling largely, drove on. 

4 

Mary Graham was younger than Ninian, nearly two 
years younger, and very different from him. He was big 
in body and bone, and fair and very hearty in his manner. 
When Ninian approved of you he did not pat your back: 
he punched it so that your bones rattled and your flesh 
Cingled. All his movements were large, splashy, as Gil- 


CHANGING WINDS 


bert said, and his voice was incapable of whispers. But 
Mary was slight and small and dark and her laugh was 
like the sound of a little silver bell. She was standing on 
an earth mound at the entrance to the lane when Henry 
came up to Ninian and her, and he wondered to himself 
how her small, shapely head could bear the weight of the 
long dark hair which fell about her shoulders in a thick, 
flowing pile. Ninian was chattering to her so loudly and 
so rapidly that Henry could hardly hear her replies. . . . 

“Oh, this is Quinny Ninian said, jerking his thumb in 
Henry’s direction. “His real name is Quinn, Henry 
Quinn, but we call him ‘Quinny.’ At least, Gilbert does, 
so, of course we do too. And he’s Irish, but he isn’t a 
Catholic, and he says Irish people don’t keep pigs in their 
houses, and they eat other things besides potatoes and . . . 
come on, Quinny, buck up and be civil ! ’ ’ 

Mary stepped down from the mound, and held out her 
hand to Henry. “How do you do!” she said, smiling at 
him, and he took her hand and said he was very well and 
asked her how she did, and she said she was very well, 
and then she smiled again, and so Henry smiled too. 

Ninian had moved on up the lane. “Buck up, you 
two 1 ” he said. “I’m hungry ! ” He started to run, think- 
ing of tea, and then he suddenly checked himself and came 
back. “I say, Mary,” he said, “ Quinny ’s fearfully gone 
on wildflowers and birds and . . . and Nature . . . and 
that sort of stuff. Show him the primroses and things, 
will you ? I ’ve got an awful hunger and I want to see the 
mater. Oh, Quinny, these are primroses, these yellow 
things, and Mary ’ll show you anything else you want to 
see. There’s a jolly lot of honeysuckle and hazelnuts in 
these hedges later on. So long!” He went off again, run- 
ning in a heavy, lumbering fashion because of the ascent 
and the broken, stony ground. 

Henry stood still, waiting for Mary to make a decision. 
He could not think of anything to say and so he just 
smiled. He began to feel hot and uncomfortable, and it 


1 


CHANGING WINDS 


27 


seemed to him suddenly that Mary must think he was 
a frightful fool, maundering about primroses and wild vio- 
lets and bluebells, and yet not able to say a word for him- 
self in her presence . . . standing there, grinning like . . . 
like anything, and . . . and not saying a word. 

She was standing sideways, with her head turned to look 
at her brother, now disappearing round a bend in the lane, 
and Henry was able to observe her more closely. He saw 
that she was wearing a short frock, reaching to her knees, 
and he plucked up heart. ‘‘She’s only a kid,” he said to 
himself, and then said aloud to her, “It’s awf’lly nice 
herel” 

She turned towards him as he spoke and he saw that her 
face was still smiling. “Yes, isn’t it?” she answered. 
“Shall we go on now, or would you like to gather some 
primroses. There are lots in this lane, or if you like to 
walk up to the copse, there are more there, and we can 
mix them with bluebells. I think primroses and bluabells 
are lovely together, don’t you?” 

He thought it would be nicer to go to the copse, and so 
they moved on up the lane. 

“I like these high hedges,” he said. “We don’t have 
high hedges in Ireland. In lots of places we don’t have 
hedges at all — only stone walls ! ’ ’ 

Mary made a grimace. “I shouldn’t like that,” she ex- 
claimed. “I love hedges . . . best in the spring because 
then they’re new. There’s always something living in 
them. I never go by the hedges without hearing some- 
thing moving inside . . . birds and mice and things. Of 
course, it’s very stuffy in the lanes in summer because the 
hedges are so high and the leaves are so thick and the air 
can’t get through! . . . Look! Look!” She climbed on 
to the bars of a gate, and pointed, and he climbed on to 
the bars beside her, and saw the English Channel, shining 
like a sheet of silver in the setting sun. 

“Can you see the trawlers coming home?” she said. 
“Out there! Do you see? Those are our boats ... the 


28 


CHANGING WINDS 


Boveyhayne boats. That one with the brown sails is Tom 
Yeo’s boat. He’s awf ’lly nice and his wife’s going to have 
a baby. He told me so, and they hope it’ll be a boy be- 
cause Jim Kattenbury-^hat ’s Tom Yeo’s mate in the boat 
... his wife had a daughter last month, and they all think 
it would be awf ’lly nice if Tom’s son were to grow up and 
marry Jim’s daughter, and I think it would, and of course 
it would, wouldn’t it?” 

‘‘Would it?” said Henry. 

‘ ‘ Of course it would. It would be so nice for everybody, 
and then the boat could be left to Tom’s son and it would 
belong to Jim’s daughter, too. I think that would be very 
nice! I do hope they’ve caught a lot of fish!” She 
jumped down from the gate and clapped her hands to- 
gether. “I know,” she said. “We won’t pluck primroses 
now. We’ll go home and simply swallow our tea like light- 
ning, and then we’ll tear down to the beach and see them 
landing the fish. Come on, let’s run!” She started off 
and then suddenly checked herself and said, “Oh, I think 
I’d better call you ‘Quinny,’ like Ninian. It’ll save a lot 
of trouble, won’t it? Mother won’t call you that. She’ll 
probably call you ‘Henry’ or ‘Harry.’ If we hurry up, 
we’ll be just in time to see the boats beached!” 

She ran off, laughing pleasantly, and he followed after 
her. 

“That’s the copse,” she shouted, pointing to the trees 
on her left. “We’ll soon be there!” 

They reached the top of the lane and crossed a narrow 
public road, and then were in a broad avenue, almost 
arched by trees, at the end of which was the Manor. It 
was a squarely-built sixteenth century house, made of stone, 
taken from the Roman quarry a mile or two away on the 
road to Franscombe. The first Graham to own it received 
it and the lands adjacent to it from Henry the Second, 
and ever since that time a Graham had been lord of the 
manor of Boveyhayne. Ninian was the last of his line. If 
he were to die, there would be no more Grahams at Bovey- 


CHANGING WINDS 


29 


hayne. That was the fear that haunted Mrs. Graham. . . . 

Mary ran swiftly across the grass in the centre of^the 
avenue and pushed open the gate that led through a fine 
stone arch. She held the gate op^ for Henry, and then 
they both passed up the flagged path into the house. 

“Mother, mother!’’ Mary shouted, quickly entering the 
drawing-room, “here’s Quinny, and please can we have 
tea at once because the trawlers are just coming home and 
we want to see them being beached and ... oh, I say, my 
hands are messy, aren’t they. Still, it doesn’t matter! I 
can wash them afterwards.” 

“My dear!” said Mrs. Graham reproachfully, and then 
she turned to greet Henry who had become awkward again. 
“How do you do, Mr. Quinn,” she said, holding her hand 
out to him. 

Henry flushed deeply. It was the first time any one had 
ever called him Mister, and he was very glad that Ninian 
was not present to hear. He was quite well, he said. No, 
he was not a bit tired. Yes, he would rather like to go 
to his room. ... A maid had followed him into the room, ' 
and Mrs. Graham asked her to show Mr. Quinn to his room, 
and, flushing deeper still, he turned to go with her. As 
he left the room, he heard Mary saying to Mrs. Graham, 
“Oh, mother, you mustn’t call him Mr. Quinn. He blushed 
frightfully when you said that. His name is ‘Quinny,’ or 
you can call him ‘Henry’ if you like!” 

‘ ‘ I think I ’ll call him ‘ Henry, ’ my dear ! ’ ’ said Mrs. Gra- 
ham. 


5 . 

It seemed to Henry that Mrs. Graham was the most beau- 
tiful woman in the world, and he had a great longing that 
she would draw him to her, as she drew Ninian, and put her 
arms about him and kiss him. Sometimes he had faint 
memories of the way in which poor Bridget Fallon had 
hugged him, and how she had cried over him once when she 


30 


CHANGING WINDS 


told him that his soul would be damned forever because he 
was a “black Protestant.” . . . He remembered that epi- 
sode more vividly than any other because he had howled 
with fear when she narrated the pains and torments of hell 
to him. There had been a Mission at the chapel the pre- 
vious week, and a preaching friar had frightened the wits 
out of her with his description of “the bad place.” He 
had told the congregation of scared servants and frightened 
labourers that they would be laid on red-hot bars in hell 
and that the devil would send demons to nip their flesh 
with burning pincers. . . . Henry could not be comforted 
until she had promised to rescue him from the Evil One, 
and when she bade him wear the scapular, he hurriedly 
hung it round his neck as if he were afraid that before he 
could get it on, the Devil would have him. . . . Well, Brid- 
get had loved him very tenderly, and of all the women he 
had ever known, she seemed to him to be the most beauti- 
ful. But Mrs. Graham was more beautiful than Bridget, 
more beautiful than Bridget could ever be. There was 
something so exquisite in her movements, her smile (Mary 
had her smile) and her soft sweet voice with its slight 
Devonshire burr, that Henry felt he wished to sit beside 
her and walk with her and always be by her. His sudden, 
growing love for her made him feel bold, and he lost the 
shy, nervous sensation he had had when he first came into 
her presence and heard her call him “Mr. Quinn,” and so, 
when Ninian and Mary talked about the trawlers, he turned 
to Mrs. Graham quite naturally, and said, “Won’t you 
come to the beach, too, Mrs. Graham?” Instantly Ninian 
and Mary were clamorous that she should go with them, 
and so she consented. . . . 

“We’ll have to hurry,” said Mary, “because the boats 
come in awf’lly quick.” 

“My dear, I can’t run,” Mrs. Graham said. 

It was Ninian who suggested that Widger should harness 
the pony and that they should drive down to the beach in 
the buggy. . . . 


CHANGING WINDS 


31 


^ ^ Yes, yes, ’ ^ said Mary. 

And Ninian went off to tell Widger to hurry harder than 
he had ever hurried before in his life. 

^‘I’ll do that for ’ee, Master Ninyan, sure 'nough P’ said 
Widger. 

But Ninian and Mary were too impatient to wait for the 
huggy, and so they set off together, leaving Henry to fol- 
low with Mrs. Graham. 

‘^Quinny’ll drive you down, mater, Ninian said. 

Mrs. Graham turned to Henry. ^‘You won^t let Peggy 
run away with me, will you?’^ she said, pretending to be 
alarmed, and Mary and Ninian burst into laughter at the 
thought of Peggy . . . which was short for Pegasus . . . 
running away with any one. 

‘‘He’s fat and lazy,” said Ninian. 

“He goes to sleep in the shafts,” Mary added, running 
out of the drawing-room on Ninian ’s heels. 

6 

Boveyhayne Bay is a little bay within the very large bay 
that is guarded at one end by Portland Bill and at the 
other end by Start Point. It lies in the shelter of two 
white cliffs which keep its water quiet even when the sea 
outside is rough, and so it is a fine home for fishermen 
though there is no harbour and the trawlers have to be 
hauled up the shingly beach every night. Nowhere else on 
that coast are chalk cliffs to be found, and the sudden 
whiteness of Boveyhayne Head and the White Cliff shin- 
ing out of the red clay of the adjoining cliffs is a sign to 
sailors, passing down the Channel on their homeward beat, 
that they are off the coast of Devonshire. Mrs. Graham 
talked to Henry about the fishermen as they drove down 
Bovey Lane towards the village. 

“I love Boveyhayne,” she said, “because the people are 
so fine. They rely on themselves far more than any other 
people I know. That’s because they’re fishermen, I sup- 


32 


CHANGING WINDS 


pose, and have no employers. They work for themselves 
. . . and it’s frightfully hard work too. People come to 
Boveyhayne in the summer, but they can’t spoil it because 
the villagers don’t depend on visitors for a living: they 
depend on themselves . . . and the sea. There isn ’t a man 
in Boveyhayne who is pretending to be a fisherman and is 
really a cadger on summer visitors. Some of them won’t 
be bothered to take people out in rowing-boats — they feel 
that that is work for the old. I used to wonder,” she went 
on, “why it was that I didn’t really like the villagers in 
other places, but I never found out why until I came to 
Boveyhayne, and it was simply because I felt instinctively 
that they were spongers . . . those other people . . . that 
they hadn’t any real work to do, and that they were living 
on us like . . . like ticks on a sheep. The Boveyhayne 
men are splendid men. It wouldn’t make any difference 
. . . much difference, anyhow ... to them if another vis- 
itor never came to the place. And that is how it ought to 
be in every village in England!” 

Henry was not quite certain that he understood all that 
she was saying, but he liked to listen to her, and so he did 
not interrupt her, except to say “Yes” and “I suppose so” 
when it seemed that she was waiting for him to say some- 
thing. 

“Do you like being in England?” she asked him sud- 
denly. 

“Oh, yes,” he answered. 

“Would you rather be in England than in Ireland?” 

He did not know. He liked being at home with his 
father, but he also liked being at Rumpell’s with Gilbert 
and Roger and Ninian, and now he felt that he would like 
to be at Boveyhayne with Mrs. Graham and Mary. 

“Perhaps you like people better than you like places,” 
Mrs. Graham said. 

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I hadn’t thought about 
that.” 


CHANGING WINDS 


SS 


‘‘You must come again to Boveyhayne. Perhaps, in the 
summer, Gilbert and Roger will come, too ! ’ ’ 

Henry thought that that would be awf ’lly jolly. . . . 

They turned down the village street and left Peggy at 
the foot of it while they went down the slope leading on to 
the beach where the trawlers were now being hauled up 
by the aid of hand winches. Henry could see Mary and 
Ninian in the group of fishermen who were working the 
nearest winch. They had hold of one of the wooden bars 
and were helping to push it round. 

“Well go down to the boats, said Mrs. Graham, “and 
see the fish ! ’ ’ 

She put her hand on his shoulder, and he helped to 
steady her as they walked across the shingle to where the 
boats were slowly climbing out of the sea over wooden run- 
ners on to the high stones. 

One of the boats had already been hauled up, and the 
fishermen, having thrown cut their gear, were now getting 
ready to sell their fish. They threW> cut a heap of skate 
and dun-cows,^ and auctioned them to the dealers standing 

by. 

“TheyVe still alive,’’ Henry whispered to Mrs. Graham 
as he watched the dun-cows curling their bodies and the 
skate gasping in the air. He looked over the side of the 
trawler and saw baskets of dabs and plaice and some soles 
and turbot and a couple of crabs. A plaice flapped help- 
lessly and fell olf the heap in the basket on to the bottom 
of the boat, and one of the fishermen trod on it. . . . 
“They’re all alive,” Henry said, turning again to Mrs. 
Graham. 

“Yes,” she answered. 

“But . . . isn’t it cruel? Oughtn’t they to kill them?” 

‘ ‘ It would take a long time to kill all those fish, ’ ’ she said. 
“Most of them are dead already, and the others will be 
dead soon. ...” 


1 Dog-fish. 


34 


CHANGING WINDS 


But he could not rid himself of the feeling that the fish 
were suffering agonies, and he began to feel sick with pity. 

think I’ll go and see Mary and Ninian,” he said to 
Mrs. Graham, edging away from the boat. 

‘‘All right,” she replied. 

But Ninian and Mary were on their way down to the 
boats, and so he did not get far. 

“Come and see them cutting up the skate and dun- 
cows!” said Ninian, catching hold of Henry’s arm and 
pulling him back. 

“Yes, let’s,” Mary added. 

The sick feeling was growing stronger in Henry. He 
hated the sight of blood. Once he had been ill in the street 
because William Henry Matier had shown a dead rabbit to 
him, the blood dribbling from its mouth . . . and the sight 
of a butcher’s shop always filled him with nausea. He did 
not wish to see the skate cut up, but he felt that Mary 
would despise him if he did not go with Ninian and her, 
so he followed after them. 

The fishermen were sharpening their knives on the stones 
when they came up to them, and then one of them seized 
a dun-cow and struck its head on the shingle and cut it 
open, while another fisherman inserted his knife into the 
quivering body of a skate and cut out the entrails and the 
head in circular pieces. 

“But they’re alive,” said Henry. 

“Of course, they’re alive,” said Ninian, seizing a dun- 
cow and smacking its head against the beach. “Here you 
are, Jim,” he added, passing the dun-cow to a fisherman. 
“Here’s another one!” 

Henry could not stay any longer. He turned away 
quickly and almost ran up the beach. “Hilloa,” Ninian 
shouted after him, “where are you going?” 

He stopped for a moment and looked back, wondering 
what excuse he should make for his running away. “I 
. . . I’m just going to see if ... if Peggy’s all right!” 

^^She^s all right,” Ninian replied. 


CHANGING WINDS 


S5 


“I think I’ll just go all the same,” said Henry. 

‘‘But you’ll miss it all,” Mary called to him. 

“ I ’ll . . . I ’ll come back presently, ’ ’ he answered. 

7 

He had finished a game of cards with Mary and then 
Mary had gone off to bed. She had kissed her mother and 
Ninian, and then she held out her hand to him and said 
‘ ‘ Good-night, Quinny ! ’ ’ and he said ‘ ‘ Good-night, Mary ! ’ ’ 
and held the door open for her so that she might pass out. 

“Let’s go out in a boat to-morrow,” she said. “We’ll 
go to the Smugglers’ Cave. ...” 

“Yes, let’s,” he answered. 

When she had gone, Mrs. Graham called him to her. 
“Come and sit here,” she said, pointing to a footstool at 
her feet. Ninian was trying to solve a chess problem and 
was deaf to the whole world. . . . 

“I suppose you didn’t like to see the fish being gutted, 
Henry?” Mrs. Graham said. 

He glanced up at her quickly. He had not spoken of 
his feeling to any of them because he was ashamed of it. 
“It’s namby-pamby of me,” he had said to himself. He 
flushed as he looked up, fearing that she must despise him 
for his weakness, and he almost denied that he had had any 
feeling at all about it ; but he did not deny it. “I couldn ’t 
bear it, Mrs. Graham,” he said quickly in a low voice. “I 
felt I should be ill if I stayed there any longer!” 

‘ ‘ I used to feel like that, ’ ’ she said, patting his shoulder, 
“but you soon get used to it. The fishermen aren’t really 
cruel. They are the kindest men I know!” 

Ninian, having failed to solve his chess problem, got up 
from the table and stretched himself and yawned. 

“I’m going to bed, Quinny,” he said. “Are you 
coming ? ’ ’ 

Henry rose and shook hands with Mrs. Graham. ‘ ‘ Good- 
night,” he said. 


CHANGING WINDS 


S6 


‘‘Good-night, Henry she replied. “I hope you’ll 
sleep well.” And then she turned to kiss Ninian, who 
pushed a sleepy face against hers. 

8 

In the morning, there were fried plaice for breakfast, 
and Henry ate two of them. 

“These are some of the fish you saw on the beach last 
night,” said Mrs. Graham. 

“Oh, yes,” said Henry, reaching for the toast, and 
swallowing a mouthful of the fish. “And jolly nice, too !” 


THE THIRD CHAPTER 


1 

He stayed at Boveyhayne until the time came to return 
to RumpelPs, and the holiday passed so quickly that he 
could not believe that it was really over. They had pic- 
nicked in the Smugglers’ Cave and on Boveyhayne Com- 
mon where the gorse was in bloom, and Henry had plucked 
whinblossoms to dye Easter eggs when he found that the 
Grahams did not know that whinblossoms could be used 
in this way. “You boil the blossoms and the eggs together, 
and the eggs come out a lovely browny-yellow colour. We 
always dye our eggs like that in the north of Ireland!” 
And on the day they picnicked on Boveyhayne Common, 
Mrs. Graham took them down the side of the hill to the 
big farm at Franscombe and treated them to a Devonshire 
tea : bread and butter and raspberry jam and cream, cream 
piled thick on the jam, and cake. (But they ate so much 
of the bread and butter and jam and cream that they could 
not eat the cake.) And they swam every day. . . . Mary 
was like a sea-bird: she seemed to swim on the crest of 
every wave as lightly as a feather, and was only submerged 
when she chose to thrust her head into the body of some 
wave swelling higher and higher until its curled top could 
stay no longer and it pitched forward and fell in a white, 
spumy pile on the shore. She would climb over the stern 
of a rowing-boat and then plunge from it into the sea 
again, and come up laughing with the water streaming 
from her face and hair, or dive beneath Ninian and pull 
his feet until he kicked out. . . . 

And then the last evening of his visit came. The vicar 
of Boveyhayne and his wife were to dine at the Manor 

37 


38 


CHANGING WINDS 


that night, and so they were bidden to put on their com- 
pany manners and their evening clothes. Ninian grumbled 
lustily when he heard the news, for he had made arrange- 
ments with a fisherman to “clean’’ a skate that evening 
when the trawlers came home. “I bet him thruppence I 
could do it as good as he could, and now I’ll have to pay 
up. Beastly swizz, that’s what it is!” he said to Henry in 
the stable where he was busy rubbing down Peggy, al- 
though Peggy did not need or wish to be rubbed down. “I 
think Mother ought to give me the thruppence any- 
how! . . .” 

After dinner, Ninian and Henry and Mary had contrived 
to miss the drawing-room, whither Mrs. Graham led the 
Vicar and his wife, and they went to the room which had 
been the nursery and was now a work-room, and lit the 
fire and sat round it, talking and telling tales and reading 
until the time came for Mary to go to bed. 

“We’re going soon, too!” said Ninian. “We’ve got to 
get up jolly early to-morrow, blow it! I hate getting up 
early!” 

Henry yawned and stretched out his hands to the fire. 
“I wish I weren’t going to-morrow,” he said, half re- 
flectively. 

“So do I,” Mary exclaimed. 

She was sitting on the floor beside him and he turned to 
look at her, a little startled by the suddenness of her 
speech. 

“I wish you weren’t going,” she said, sitting up and 
leaning against him as she was accustomed to lean against 
Ninian. “ It ’s been great fun this Easter ! ’ ’ 

Ninian caught hold of her hair and pulled it. ‘ ‘ He isn ’t 
a bad chap, old Quinny,” he said. “Soft-hearted, a bit!” 

^ ‘ Shut up, Ninian ! ’ ’ Henry shouted, punching him in the 
ribs. 

But Ninian would not shut up. “Blubs like anything 
if you kill a rabbit or anything. He eats them all the 
same ! ’ ’ 


CHANGING WINDS 


39 


Mary put her hands over Ninian’s mouth. Leave 
Quinny alone, Ninian,’’ she said. “He’s much nicer than 
you, and I do think it’s horrid of you to go gutting fish just 
for fun. The fishermen have to do it, else we wouldn’t 
get any breakfast, and of course plaice are very nice for 
breakfast. ...” 

“Yahhh!” yelled Ninian. 

“Well, anyhow,” she continued, “ Quinny ’s much nicer 
than you are. Aren’t you, Quinny?” 

“No, he isn’t,” Ninian asserted stoutly. “I’m ten times 
nicer than he is ! ” 

“No, you’re not. . . .” 

Henry, embarrassed at first by Mary’s admiration, 
plucked up his spirits and joined in. 

“Of course, I’m nicer than you are, Ninian,” he said. 
“Anybody could see that with half an eye in his head !” 

“All right, then. I’ll fight you for it,” Ninian replied, 
squaring up at him in mock rage. 

“I’ll box your ears for you, Ninian Graham!” said 
Mary, “and I won’t let Quinny fight you, and Quinny, if 
you dare to fight him, I shan’t like you any more. ...” 

“Then I won’t fight him, Mary. She’s saved your life, 
Ninian,” he said, turning to his friend. 

“Yahhh!” Ninian shouted. 

“ I ’ll get up very early to-morrow morning, ’ ’ said Mary, 
as she prepared to leave them, “and perhaps mother’ll 
let me drive to Whitcombe with you to see you off I ” 

“No,” Ninian objected, “we don’t want you blubbing 
all over the platform! ...” 

“I shan’t blub, Ninian. I never blub! ...” 

“Yes, you do. You always blub. You blubbed the last 
time and made me feel an awful ass!” he persisted. 

“Well, I shan’t blub this time, or if I do, it won’t be 
about you. . . . Anyhow, I shall get up early and see 
Quinny off. I like Quinny! ...” 

Ninian pointed at Henry, and burst out laughing. “Oh ! 
Oh, he’s blushing! Look at him! Oh! Oh!!” 


40 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘Shut up, Ninian, you ass!’^ said Henry, turning away. 

Mary went over to him and took hold of his arm. 
“Never mind, Quinny,’’ she said, “I do like you. Good- 
night!’^ 

Then she went out and left him alone with Ninian. 

“I suppose, ”^^said Ninian when she had gone, “we ought 
to go down and say something to the Vicar!” 

2 

That night, Henry went to bed in the knowledge that he 
loved Mary Graham. “I’ll marry her,” he said, as he 
stripped his clothes off. “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll jolly 
well marry her ! ’ ’ 

In the excitement of his love, he forgot to wash his hands 
and face and clean his teeth, and he climbed into bed and 
lay there thinking about Mary. “I suppose,” he said, “I 
ought to tell her about it. That ass, Ninian ’ll be sure to 
laugh if I tell him!” He sat up suddenly in bed. 
“Lord,” he exclaimed, “I forgot to wash!” He got out 
of bed and washed himself. “Beastly fag, cleaning your 
teeth,” he murmured, and then went back to bed. I 

“I know,” he said, as he blew out the candle and hauled 1 
the clothes well about his neck. “I’ll make Ninian look \ 
after the luggage and stuff, and then I ’ll tell her. On the i 
platform ! I hope she won’t be cross about it ! ” And then ; 
he fell asleep. ' 


3 • 

In the morning, they went off, Mary with them, and they | 
stood up in the carriage and waved their hands to Mrs. i 
Graham until the dip in the road hid her from their view. 
Ninian, who had been so disdainful of “blubbers” the 
night before, sat down in a corner of the carriage and 
looked miserable, but neither ]\Tary nor Henry said any- 
thing to him. They drove slowly down the Lane because 


CHANGING WINDS 


41 


it was difficult to do otherwise, but when they had come 
into the road that leads to Franscombe, Widger whipped 
up the horse, and the carriage moved quickly through the 
village, past the schools, until they came to the long hill 
out of the village . . . and there Jim Rattenbury was wait- 
ing for them. 

“I brought ’ee a li’l bit o’ fish, Mas’er Ninyan,” he said, 
putting a basket into the carriage. 

“I say, Jim!” Ninian exclaimed, forgetting his misery 
for a while. They thanked him for the gift and enquired 
about the baby Rattenbury and wished him good-luck in 
the mackerel fishing, and were about to go on when Ninian 
recollected his failure to keep his appointment with Tom 
Yeo on the previous evening. “Oh, Jim,” he said, “I bet 
Tom Yeo thruppence I’d ‘clean’ a skate as good as he can, 
but I couldn’t come ... so here’s the thruppence. You 
might give it to Tom for me, will you 1 ’ ’ 

Jim Rattenbury waved the money away. “Ah, that be 
all right, Mas’er Ninyan,” he exclaimed. “You can try 
your ’and 'at it nex’ time you comes ’ome. I’ll tell Tom. 
’Er’ll be glad to ’ave longer to get ready for it, ’er will!” 
He laughed at his own joke, and they laughed, too. “Good 
luck to ’ee, Mas’er Ninyan,” Jim went on, “an’ to ’ee too, 
sir ! ” he added, turning to Henry. 

“And me, Jim, and me!” Mary said impetuously. 

“Why, o’ course. Miss Mary, an’ to ’ee, too!” 

They drove on up the hill, from which they could look 
down on the village, tucked snugly in the hollow of the 
rising lands, and along the top of the ridge, gaining 
glimpses of the blue Channel, dotted far out with the sails 
of trawlers, and down the hair-pin road where the pine 
trees stand like black sentinels, through Whitcombe to the 
station. . . . 

“I wish we weren’t going! ...” one or other of them 
said as they drove on. 

“I’d love to have another swim,” said Ninian. 

“Or go out in a boat,” said Henry. 


4 ^ 


CHANGING WINDS 


The carriage entered the station-yard and they got out 
and walked towards the platform. There were very few 
people travelling by that early train, and Henry was glad 
because, if he could dispose of Ninian for a few moments, 
he thought he could settle his affairs with Mary. 

“Ninian,’^ he said, trying to speak very casually, ‘‘you 
and Widger can look after the luggage and tickets, can’t 
you ? ’ ’ 

Ninian, who had already induced one of the porters to 
describe a thrilling fox-hunt in which the fox took to the 
river and was killed, after a hard struggle, in the water, 
nodded his head and said “Righto!” 

“Let’s walk up and down,” Henry said to Mary, and 
they walked towards the end of the platform. “It’s been 
awf’lly nice here!” he added. 

“Yes, hasn’t it?” she replied. “You’ll come again, 
won’t you?” 

“Ra-ther!” he exclaimed. 

“How long will it be before you can come again?” 

“I don’t know. You see, my father’ll expecrt me to go 
home in the summer. ...” 

“Oh!” 

“But I might come for part of the hols. I’d like to !” 

“Yes,” she said, sliding one of her feet in front of her 
and regarding the tip of her shoe intently. 

They did not speak for a few moments until he remem- 
bered that time was fleeting. “It’s an awf’lly nice day,” 
he said, and licked his lips. 

“Yes, isn’t it? . . 

“Awf’lly nice,” he continued and broke off lamely. 

They could see the train coming into Coly station, and a 
sense of despair seized Henry when he thought that it 
would soon come into Whitcombe station and then go back 
again to the junction, carrying Ninian and him with it. 
He could feel his nervousness mounting up his legs until it 
began to gallop through his body. ... He felt frightfully 
dry, and when he tried to speak, he could not do anything 


CHANGING WINDS 


43 


but cough. The train had started now from Coly station. 
He could see the white smoke rising from the engine ^s 
funnel almost in a straight line, so little wind was there in 
the valley. . . . ^‘Oh, Lord!’’ he said to himself. . . . 

“What age are you?” he suddenly demanded of her. 

“Fourteen,” she replied. 

“I’m sixteen . . . nearly 1 ” he continued. 

“Ninian’s over sixteen,” Mary said, and added, “I wish 
I were sixteen!” 

“Why?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. I just wish I were. When I’m 
sixteen, you’ll be eighteen . . . nearly!” 

“So I shall. I say, Mary! . . 

“Yes, Quinny?” 

He could hear the rattle of the train on the railway lines, 
and, turning towards the other end of the platform, he saw 
that Ninian, having settled about the luggage and finished 
listening to the story of the fox hunt, was approaching 
them. “Come on,” he said, catching hold of Mary’s arm 
and drawing her to the other end of the platform. 

“But that’s the wrong end,” she protested. 

“I say, Mary! . . .” 

“Yes, Quinny?” 

“Oh, I say, Mary! . . .” 

“Yes? . . 

“I’d like to marry you awf’lly, if you don’t mind!” 

It was out ... oh. Lord, it was out ! . . . 

“Oh, I should love it, Quinny,” said Mary, looking up at 
him and smiling. 

“Would you really?” 

“Yes. Of course, I would. Let’s tell Ninian and 
Widger! . . . 

Her suggestion alarmed him. Ninian would be sure to 
chaff him about it. . . . “Oh, not yet! . . .” he began, 
but he was too late. Ninian had come up to them, grum- 
bling, “I thought you two’d started to leg it to Rum- 
pelFs. . . .” 


CHANGING WINDS 


41 


Mary seized his arm and pressed it tightly. ‘‘Quinny 
and me are going to get married/^ she said. 

“Silly asses/’ said Ninian. “Come on, here’s the train 


4 

They climbed into their carriage a few seconds before 
the train steamed out of the station again, and jammed 
themselves in the window to look out. Ninian was full of 
* instructions to Widger about his terrier and his ferrets and 
a blind mouse that was supposed to recognise him with 
miraculous ease. There was also some point about the fox- 
hunt which required explanation. . . . 

“Good-bye, Mary!” Henry said, taking hold of her 
hand and pressing it. “I suppose,” he whispered, “I 
ought to give you a ring or something. Chaps always do 
that! . . .” 

Mary shook her head. “I don’t think mother would 
like that,” she replied. 

“Well, anyhow, we’re engaged, aren’t we?” 

“Oh, of course, Quinny!” 

“It’s most awf’lly nice of you to have me, Mary!” 

‘ ‘ But I like you ! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Do you really ? ’ ’ 

The guard blew his whistle and waved his flag and the 
train began to move out of the station. He stood at the 
window looking back at Mary standing on the platform, 
waving her hands to him, until he could see her no longer. 

“What are you looking at?” Ninian asked, taking down 
the basket of fish which Jim Rattenbury had given him and 
preparing to open it. 

“I’m looking at Mary,” he answered. 

“Sloppy ass!” said Ninian, and then he added excitedly, 
“Oh, I say, plaice and dabs and a lobster ... a whopping 
big lobster! It’s berried, too!” He pointed to the red 


CHANGING WINDS 


45 


seeds in the lobster’s body. “My Heavenly Father, 
Quinny!” he exclaimed, “what a tuck-in we’ll have to- 
night ! ’ ’ 

“Eh?” Henry replied vaguely. 


THE FOURTH CHAPTER 


1 

Gilbert summoned Roger and Henry and Ninian to a 
solemn council. “Look here/^ he said, “IVe made up my 
mind about myself ! ’ ^ 

“Oh!’’ they exclaimed. 

“Yes. I’m going to be a dramatist and write plays!” 

“Why?” Ninian asked. 

“I dunno! I went to see a play in the hols, and I 
thought I’d like to write one, too. It seems easy enough. 
You just make up a lot of talk, and then you get some 
actors to say it. . . .” 

“I see,” said Ninian. 

“And when I was a kid,” Gilbert continued, “I used to 
make up plays for parties. Jolly good, they were ... at 
least I thought so ! ” 

Gilbert, having settled what his own career was to be, 
was eager that his friends should settle what their careers 
were to be. “Roger, of course,” he said, “has made up his 
mind to be a barrister, so that’s him, but what about you, 
Ninian, and what about Quinny?” 

Ninian said that he did not know what he should do. 
Mrs. Graham was anxious that he should become a member 
of parliament and lead the life of a country gentleman who 
takes an intelligent interest in his estate and his country. 
His Uncle George, the Dean of Exebury, oscillated between 
two opinions : one that Ninian should become a parson. . . . 

Gilbert suddenly proposed a resolution, sternly forbid- 
ding their young friend, Ninian Graham, to become a par- 
son on any conditions whatever. The resolution was sec- 
onded by Henry Quinn, and passed unanimously. 

46 


CHANGING WINDS 


47 


. . . and the other that he should enter the Diplomatic 
Service. The Dean had talked largely to Ninian on the 
subject of his career. On the whole he had inclined to- 
wards the Diplomatic Service. He had stood in front of 
the fire, his hands thrust through the belt of his apron and 
talked magnificently of the glories of diplomacy. ^‘How 
splendid it would be, Ninian, ’ ’ he said in that rich, flowing 
voice which caused ladies to admire his sermons so much, 
“if you were to become an ambassador!” Ninian, feeling 
that he ought to say something, had murmured that he 
supposed it would be rather jolly. “An ambassador!” 
the Dean continued. “His Britannic Majesty ^s Ambas- 
sador to the Imperial Court of ... of Vienna!” He 
liked the sound of the title so much that he repeated it: 
“His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador! ...” 

But Ninian had interrupted him. “I don’t think I’d 
like that job very much. Uncle George !” he said. “You’re 
supposed to have an awful lot of tact if you’re an ambas- 
sador, and I ’m rather an ass at tact ! ’ ’ 

“Well, then, the Church!” the Dean suggested. “After 
all, the Church is still the profession of a gentleman ! . . . ” 
But Ninian had as little desire to be a priest as he had 
to be an ambassador. He wished to be an engineer ! 

“A what?” the Dean had exclaimed in horror. 

“An engineer, uncle!” 

The Dean could not rid himself of the notion that Ninian 
was a small boy, and so he imagined that when Ninian said 
an “engineer,” he meant a man who drives a railway 
engine. . . . The Dean was not insensible to the value of 
engineers to the community ... in fact, whenever he 
travelled by train, he invariably handed any newspapers 
he might have with him to the engine-driver at the end of 
the journey, “because,” he said, “I wish to show my appre- 
ciation of the fact that without his care and skill I might 
— er — have been — ^well involved in a collision or something 
of the sort!” But, while the occupation of an engine- 
driver was a very admirable one . . . very admirable one, 


48 


CHANGING WINDS 


indeed . . . for a member of the working-class, it could 
hardly be described as a suitable occupation for a gentle- 
man. ‘‘I think, he said, “that engine-drivers get thirty- 
eight shillings per week, or some such amount!” He ad- 
justed his glasses and beamed pleasantly at Ninian. “My 
dear boy,” he said, “thirty-eight shillings per week is 
hardly . . . hardly an adequate income for a Graham ! ’ ’ 

Ninian did not like to ask his uncle George to “chuck it,” 
nor did he care to tell him that he was making a frightful 
ass of himself, and so he did not answer, and the beaming 
old gentleman felt that he had impressed the lad. ... It 
was Mrs. Graham who reminded him of the larger functions 
of an engineer. 

“I think,” she said, “that Ninian wishes to build bridges 
and railways and . . . and things like that!” 

“Oh!” said the Dean, and his countenance altered 
swiftly. “Oh, yes, yes, yes! I was forgetting about 
bridges. Dear me, yes! I remember meeting Sir John 
Aird once. Kemarkable man! Very remarkable man! 
He built the Assouan Dam, of course. Well, that would 
be a very nice occupation, Ninian. Kather different, of 
course, from the Diplomatic Service ... or the Church 
. . . but still, very nice, very nice! And profitable, I’m 
told! . . .” 


2 

“Anyhow,” said Ninian, when he had related the story 
of his uncle ’s views, “I’m going to be an engineer, no 
matter what Uncle George says, and I’m not going to be 
a parson and I’m not going to be a blooming ambassador, 
and I’m not going into parliament to make an ass of 
myself! ...” 

Ninian ’s chief horror was of “making an ass” of him- 
self. It seemed that there was less likelihood of him doing 
this at engineering than at anything else. 

“And a very good engineer you’ll be,” Gilbert said 


CHANGING WINDS 


49 


encouragingly. ‘‘You’re always messing about with the 
insides of things, and I can’t see what good that habit 
would be to an ambassador, or a parson, and anyhow you 
can’t speak French for toffee, and that’s the principal thing 
an ambassador has to do! Well, Quinny,” he continued, 
turning to Henry, ‘ ‘ what about you ? ’ ’ 

“I used to think I’d like to be a clergyman,” Henry 
answered. 

“Oh, did you? ...” 

“And then,” he went on rapidly, “I thought I’d like to 
be an actor! ...” 

They rose at him simultaneously. “A what?” they 
shouted. 

“An actor,” he repeated. 

They gaped at him for a few moments without speaking. 
Then Ninian expressed their views. “You’re balmy!” he 
said. 

‘ ‘ Clean off your chump ! ’ ’ Gilbert added. 

‘ ‘ It seems an odd choice, ’ ’ Roger said, quietly. 

Henry blushed. “Of course,” he hurried to say, “I’ve 
given up the idea. It was just a notion that came into my 
head!” 

He went on to say that as Gilbert had resolved to be a 
writer, he did not see any reason why he should not be- 
come one too. “I’ve read an awful lot of books,” he said, 
“so I daresay I could write one. I used to write things 
when I was a youngster, just like you, Gilbert ! ’ ’ 

They gazed dubiously at Henry. A fellow who could 
make such choices of profession ... a parson or an actor 
. . . was a rum bird, in their opinion, and they told him 
so. Gilbert said that the conjunction of actor with parson 
showed that all Henry cared about was the chance to show 
off. “All you want is to get yourself up,” he said. “If 
you were a parson, you could get yourself up in a sur- 
plice! ...” 

“He’d turn High Churchman,” Roger interrupted, 
“and trot about in chasubles and copes! ...” 


50 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘And if he were an actor, he could get himself up in 
terrific style! . . Gilbert continued. 

Henry got up and walked away from them. “It isn^t 
fair,” he said, as he went, “to chip me like that. I’m not 
going to be a parson and I’m not going to be an 
actor! ...” 

Gilbert followed him and brought him back to the 
council. 

“All right, Quinny,” he said, “we won’t chip you any 
more. Only, don’t talk like a soppy ass again, will you? 
Sit down and listen to me ! . . . ” 

He forced Henry to sit beside him and then he proceeded 
to plan their lives for them. 

“We’ll all go to Cambridge,” he said. “That’s settled. 
I arranged that before, didn’t I? Well, we all go to the 
same college, and we all promise to swot hard. We’ve got 
to Do Well, d’ye hear?” He said “do well” as if each 
word had a capital letter. “We’ve got to be the Pride of 
our College, d’ye hear, and work so that the dons will shed 
tears of joy when they hear our names mentioned. I draw 
the particular attention of Ninian Graham to what I am 
saying, and I warn him that if he goes on whittling a stick 
while I’m talking, I shall clout his fat head for him. I 
also trust that our young friend, Quinny, will make up his 
mind to work hard. He’s Irish, of course, and we must 
make allowances for him ! . . . ” 

There was almost a row when Gilbert said that, and it 
was not completely averted until Gilbert had admitted that 
the English had their faults. 

“I need not say anything on the subject of hard work 
to our young friend, Roger,” Gilbert continued, when the 
peace was restored, “beyond warning him of the danger of 
getting brain-fever. That’s all I have to say about that. 
We’re friends, we four, and we’ve got to do each other 
credit. Now, when we come down from Cambridge, my 
proposal is that we all live together in London. We can 
take a house and get some old girl to look after us. I know 


CHANGING WINDS 


51 


one who’ll do. She lives in Cornwall, and she can cook 
. . . like anything. Is that agreed?” 

“Carried unanimous,” said Ninian. 

“Good egg!” Gilbert said. 

3 

But the plan was not carried out as Gilbert had made it. 
He and Ninian and Roger Carey went to Cambridge, but 
Henry did not go with them. It was Mr. Quinn who upset 
the plan. He suddenly gave notice to Rumpell’s that 
Henry would not return to the school. 

YouWe getting to he too English in your ways, Henry, 
he wrote to his son, and I want you at home for a while. 
There^s a young follow called Marsh who can tutor you 
until you go to the University. I met him in Dublin a 
while since, and I like him. He^s a hit cranky, hut he^s 
clever and he^ll teach you a lot about Ireland. He’s up to 
his neck in Irish things, and speaks Gaelic and wears an 
Irish kilt. At least he used to wear one, hut he’s left it off 
now, partly because he gets cold in his knees and partly 
because he’s not sure now that the ancient Irish ever wore 
kilts. I think you’ll like him! . . . 

“My God,” said Gilbert when Henry read this letter to 
him, “fancy being tutored by a chap who wears 
petticoats!” 

“You ought to talk pretty plainly to your guv ’nor, 
Quinny!” Ninian said. “I don’t think you ought to let 
him do that sort of thing. Here we’ve settled that we’re 
all going to Cambridge together, and your guv ’nor simply 
lumps in and upsets everything!” 

Henry declared that he would talk to his father and 
compel him to be sensible, but his attempt at compulsion 
was ineffective. Mr. Quinn had made up his mind that 
Henry was to spend several months at home, under the 
tutelage of John Marsh, and then proceed to Trinity Col- 
lege, Dublin. 


52 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Trinity College, Dublin!’^ Henry exclaimed. “But I 
want to go to Cambridge! . . 

“Well, you can’t go then. You’ll go to T.C.D. or you’ll 
go nowhere. I’m a T.C.D. man, an’ your gran ’da was a 
T.C.D. man, an’ so was his da before him, an’ a damned 
good college it is, too!” Mr. Quinn had always called his 
father his “da” when Mrs. Quinn was alive because she dis- 
liked the word and tried to insist on “papa”; and now he 
used the word as a matter of habit. ‘ ‘ What do you want to 
go to an English college for?” he demanded. “You might 
as well want to go to that Presbyterian hole in Belfast ! ’ ’ 

“I want to go to Cambridge,” Henry replied a little 
angrily and therefore a little precisely, “because all my 
friends are going there. They’re going up next year, and 
I want to go with them. They ’re my best friends ! . . . ” 

“Make friends in Ireland, then!” Mr. Quinn inter- 
rupted. “You don’t make friends with Englishmen . . . 
you make money out of them. That’s all they’re fit for!” 

He began to laugh when he said that, but Henry still 
scowled. “I hate to hear you talking like that, father!” 
he said. ‘ ‘ I know you don ’t mean it. . . . ” 

“Don’t I, begod? . . 

“No, you don’t, but even in fun, I hate to hear you 
saying it. I like English people. I’m very fond of Gil- 
bert Farlow! ...” 

“A nice fellow!” Mr. Quinn murmured, remembering 
how he had liked Gilbert when he had visited Rumpell’s 
once to see Henry. 

“And Ninian Graham and Roger Carey, I like them, too, 
and so do you. You liked them, didn’t you?” 

“Very nice fellows, both of them, very nice .. . . for all 
they’re English !” 

Henry wanted to go on . . . to talk of Mrs. Graham and 
of Mary . . . but shyness held his tongue for him. 

“It’s a habit I’ve got into,” Mr. Quinn said, talking of 
his denunciation of the English, “but don’t mind me, 
Henry. Sure, I’m like all the Ulstermen: my tongue’s 


CHANGING WINDS 


53 


more bitter nor my behaviour. All the same, my son, 
you're goin’ to T.C.D., an' that's an end of it. T.C.D.'ll 
make a man of you, but Oxford 'ud only make a snivellin’ 
High Church curate of you . . . crawlin' on your belly to 
an imitation altar an' lettin’ on to be a Catholic! ..." 

“But I don't want to go to Oxford, father. I want to 
go to Cambridge!" 

“It's all the same, Henry. Oxford'll make a snivellin' 
parson out of you, an' Cambridge 'll turn you into a snivel- 
lin' atheist. I know them places well, Henry. I'm ac- 
quainted with people from both of them. All the Belfast 
mill-owners send their sons there, so's they can be made 
into imitation Englishmen. An' I tell you there's no 
differs between Cambridge an' Oxford. You crawl on your 
belly to the reredos at Oxford, an' you crawl on your belly 
to Darwin an' John Stuart Mill at Cambridge. They can't 
do without a priest of some sort at them places, an' I'm a 
Protestant, Henry, an' I want no priest at all. Now, at 
Trinity you'll crawl on your belly to no one but your God, 
an' you’ll do damn little of that if you're any sort of man 
at all!" 

Henry had reminded his father of the history and tradi- 
tion of T.C.D., an ungracious institution which had taught 
men to despise Ireland. 

“Well, you needn't pay any heed to the Provost, need 
you," Mr. Quinn retorted. “Is a man to run away from 
his country because a fool of a schoolmaster hasn 't the guts 
to be proud of it? Talk sense, son! We want education 
in Ireland, don't we, far more nor any other people want 
it, an' how are we goin' to get it if all the young lads go 
off to Englan ' an ' let the schoolmasters starve in Ireland ! ' ' 

Henry still maintained his position. “But, father," he 
said, “you yourself have often told me that Dr. Daniell 
is an imitation Englishman. ..." Dr. DaniMl was the 
Provost of Trinity. 

“He is, and so is his whole family. I know them well 
. ^ . lick-spittles, the lot of them, an' the lad that's cornin' 


54 


CHANGING WINDS 


after him, ouC Beattie, is no better ... a half-baked snob 
. . . 1 11 tell you a story about him in a minute . . . but all 
the same, it’s not them that matter ... it’s the place and 
the tradition an’ the feel of it all . . . do you make me 
out ? ’ ’ 

^‘Yes, father, I know what you mean!” 

‘‘You’d be like a foreigner at Cambridge . . . like one of 
them fellows that come from India or Germany or places 
like that . . . but at Trinity you ’d be at home, in your own 
country, Henry, where people with brains are badly 
needed 1 ’ ’ 

He went on like that until he wore down Henry’s desire 
to go to Cambridge. “I’d rather you didn’t go to a 
university at all,” he said, “than not have you go to 
T.C.D.” 

“Very well, father!” said Henry, consenting. 

“That’s right, my son,” the old man said, patting his 
son on the back. “An’ now I’ll tell you that yarn about 
Beattie. It’ll make you split your sides!” 

It appeared that Mr. Quinn had dined at a house in 
Dublin where Dr. Beattie was also a guest, and the don 
was telling tales as was his custom, of his acquaintances in 
high places. The poor old clergyman had a weakness for 
the company of kings and queens, and liked to tell people 
of what he had said to an emperor or of what a prince had 
said to him. 

“I was talking to my friend, the Queen of Spain, a 
short time ago,” Dr. Beattie had said, “and I made a joke 
which pleased her majesty. It was about my friend, the 
Kaiser, who was present at the time. The Kaiser heard 
us laughing, her majesty and me, and he came over to ask 
us why we were laughing so heartily, the Queen and me. 
The Queen was very embarrassed because, of course, I had 
been making fun of the Kaiser, but I did not lose my self- 
possession. I turned to the Emperor and said, ‘ Sir, the 
Queen and I have known each other for a few moments 
only, but already we have a secret between us!” The 


CHANGING WINDS 


55 


Kaiser was very tickled by my retort . . . very tickled 
. . . and the Queen told me afterwards that it was very 
adroit of me to get out of it like that. She said it was my 
Irish wit! . . 

It was at this point that Mr. Quinn had interrupted. 
‘‘An’ what did your friend God say?” he had demanded 
innocently. 

Mr. Quinn sat back in his chair, when he had finished 
telling the story, and roared loudly with laughter. “You 
ought to have seen the oul’ snob turnin’ red, white an’ 
blue with rage,” he shouted at Henry. “Such a take- 
down! My God,, what a take-down! There he was, the 
oul’ wind-bag, bletherin’ about his friend, the Queen of 
Spain, an’ his friend, the Emperor of Germany, an’ there 
was me, just waitin’ for him, just waitin’, Henry, an’ the 
minute he shut his gob, I jumped in, an’ says I to him, 
‘An’ what did your friend God say?’ By the Holy O, 
that was a good one ! I never enjoyed myself so much as 
I did that night, an’ everybody else that was there was 
nearin’ burstin’ with tryin’ not to laugh. Do you mind 
Lady Galduff?” 

“Yes, father!” 

“You mind her rightly, don’t you? Well, when you go 
up to Dublin, you’re to call on her, do you hear? Never 
mind about her manners. Ask her to tell you about me 
an’ Dr. Beattie . . . the way I asked him about his friend 
God. Oh, Holy 0! ...” 

He could proceed no further, for his sides were shaking 
with laughter and the tears were streaming down his 
cheeks and his cheeks were the colour of beetroot. 

“You’ll hurt yourself, father,” said Henry, “if you 
laugh like that!” 


4 

“Of .course,” said Mr. Quinn, after a while, “the man’s 
a great scholar, an’ I mebbe did wrong to take him down 


56 


CHANGING WINDS 


like that. But I couldn’t help it, Henry. You see, he’s 
always' makin’ little of Irish things, an’ I have no use for 
a man like that. Not but what some people think too much 
of Ireland an’ too little of other places. Many’s a time I 
get ragin’ mad when I hear some of the Nationalists 
bleatin’ about Ireland as if a bit of bog in the Atlantic 
were worth the rest of the world put together. Do you 
know what, I’m goin’ to say somethin’ that’ll surprise 
you. I don’t believe Irishmen’ll think properly about 
Ireland ’til they stop thinkin’ about it altogether. We’re 
too self-conscious. We haven’t enough pride an’ we’ve 
too much conceit. That’s the truth. You daren’t say a 
word of criticism about Ireland for fear you’d have the 
people jumpin’ down your throat — an’ that’s a sign of 
weakness, Henry. Do you know why the English are as 
strong as they are? It’s because they’ll let you criticise 
them as much as you like, an’ never lose their temper with 
you. The only time I ever knew them to be flabby and 
spineless was when the Boer War was on ... an’ they’d 
scream in your face if you didn’t say they were actin’ 
like angels. They were only like that then, but we’re like 
it all the time. The fools don’t know that the best patriot 
is the man that has the courage to own up when his coun- 
try ’s in the wrong! . . 

Mr. Quinn suddenly sat up stiffly in his seat and gaped 
at his son for a few moments. 

‘‘Begod, Henry,” he said, “I’m preachin’ to you!” 

“Yes, father, you are,” Henry replied. “But I don’t 
mind. It’s rather interesting!” 

But the force had gone out of Mr. Quinn. The thought 
that he had been preaching a sermon, delivering a speech, 
filled him with self-reproach. 

“I never meant to start off like that,” he said. “I only 
meant to tell you what was in my mind. You see, Henry, 
I love Ireland an’ I want to see her as fine as ever she 
was . . . but she’ll never be fine again ’til she gets back 


CHANGING WINDS 


5T 

her pride an’ her self-respect. The English people have 
stolen that from us . . . yes, they have, Henry ! I knew 
Arthur Balfour when he was a young man ... I liked 
him too . . . but I’ll never forget that it was him that 
turned us into a nation of cadgers. I’m not much of a 
thinker, Henry, but the bit of brain I have’ll be used for 
Ireland, whatever happens. You’ve got more brains than 
I have, an’ I’d like you to use them for Ireland, too.” 

5 

‘ ‘ This is the way I look at things, ’ ’ Mr. Quinn said later 
on. ‘ ‘ The British people are the best people in the world, 
an’ the Irish people are the best people in the British Em- 
pire, an ’ the Ulster people are the best people in Ireland ! ’ ’ 
He glanced about him for a few moments as if he were 
cogitating, and then he gave a chuckle and winked at his 
son. ^‘An’ begod,” he said, “I sometimes think I’m the 
best man in Ulster!” He burst out laughing when he had 
finished. ^‘Ah,” he said, half to himself, as he stroked 
his fine beard, “I’m the quare oul’ cod, so I am!” 

“All the same,” he went on, speaking soberly, “I’m not 
^ coddin’ entirely. The Irish have plenty of brains, but 
they haven’t any discipline, an’ brains are no good unless 
you can control them. We need knowledge and experience, 
Henry, more nor anything else, an’ the more knowledge we 
bring into the country, the better it’ll be for us all. Too 
much imagination an’ not enough knowledge . . . that’s 
what’s the matter with us. The English have knowledge, 
but they ’ve small imagination ! . . . I declare to my good- 
ness, the best thing that could happen to the two of us, the 
English and the Irish, would be for some one to pass a law 
compellin’ every Irishwoman to marry an Englishman, an’ 
every Englishwoman to marry an Irishman. We’d get 
some stability into Ireland then ... an’ mebbe we’d get 
some intelligence into England.” 


58 


CHANGING WINDS 


6 

Henry acquiesced in his father’s wishes, but he did so 
reluctantly. Gilbert’s plan for their future had attracted 
him greatly. He saw himself passing pleasant years at 
Cambridge in learning and in argument. There was to be 
scholarship and company and curiosity and enquiry. They 
were to furnish their minds with knowledge and then they 
were to seek adventures in the world : a new order of Mus- 
keteers: Athos, P orthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan. . . . 
He let the names of the Musketeers slide through his mind 
in order, wondering which of them was his prototype . . . 
but he could not find a resemblance to himself in any of 
them. He felt that he would shrink from the deeds which 
they sought. . . . His mind went back again to thoughts of 
Cambridge, At all events, in the tourneys of the mind his 
part would be valiant. He would never shrink from com- 
bat with an intellect. ... He supposed it would be possi- 
ble to do at T.C.D. some of what he had proposed to do 
at Cambridge, but somehow T.C.D. did not interest him. 
It mattered as little to him as a Welsh University. It had 
no hold whatever on his mind. He knew that it was on 
the level of Oxford and Cambridge, but that knowledge did 
not console him. “It doesn’t matter in the way that they 
do, ’ ’ he said to himself, and then he remembered something 
that Gilbert Farlow had said. “T.C.D. isn’t Irish in the 
way that Oxford and Cambridge are English. It’s in Ire- 
land, but it isn ’t of Ireland ! ’ ’ Gilbert could always get at 
the centre of a thing. “Oxford and Cambridge have lots 
of faults,” Gilbert had said, “but they’re English faults. 
T.C.D. has lots of faults, but they’re not Irish faults. 
Do you see what I mean, Quinny ? It’s . . . it’s like a gar- 
rison in an unfriendly country . . . like . . . what d’ye 
call it? . . . that thing in Irish history . . . the Pale! 
That’s it! It’s the Pale still going on being a Pale long 
after the need for it had ceased. I don’t think that kind of 


CHANGING WINDS 


59 


place is much good to Irishmen. You’d better come to 
Cambridge! ...” 

“I can’t, Gilbert. My father’s set his heart on my go- 
ing to Trinity, and I must go. I’d give the world to go 
with you and Ninian and Roger, but I’ll have to do what 
he wants. Anyhow, I can join you in London when you 
come down, and we can spend our holidays together. I’ll 
get my father to ask you all to Ireland the first vac. after 
you’ve gone up, and perhaps Mrs. Graham ’ll ask us all to 
Boveyhayne. ...” 


7 

Remembering what he had said to Gilbert about Bovey- 
hayne, he remembered Mary Graham. He had not seen 
her since he had been to Boveyhayne at Easter, but he had 
written several times to her, lengthy letters, and had re- 
ceived short, shy replies from her; and sometimes he had 
tried to induce Ninian to talk about her. But “She isn’t 
a bad little flapper!” was all that Ninian would say of his 
sister, and there was little comfort to be derived from that 
speech. Now, standing here in this window-corner, look- 
ing over the fields that stretched away to the Antrim moun- 
tains, Henry felt that Mary was slipping swiftly out of his 
life. It might be a very long time before he saw her again. 
. . . How beautiful she had looked that day when she stood 
on Whitcombe platform and waved her hand to him as the 
train steamed out of the station! He must marry her. 
Mrs. Graham must ask him to spend the next summer at 
Boveyhayne so that he could meet Mary again. Anyhow 
he would write to her. He would tell her all he was doing. 
He would describe his life at Trinity to her. He would 
remind her continually of himself, and perhaps she would 
not forget him. Girls, of course, were very odd and they 
changed their minds an awful lot. Ninian might invite 
some chap from Cambridge to Boveyhayne. . . . That 


60 


CHANGING WINDS 


would be like Ninian, to go and spoil everything without 
thinking for a moment of what he was doing. ... If only 
Mary and he were a few years older, they could become for- 
mally engaged, and then everything would be all right, but 
Mary was so young . . . 


THE FIFTH CHAPTER 


1 

Soon after He^ry had returned to Ballymartin, John Marsh 
came to Mr. Quinn's house to prepare him for Trinity. 
“He'll put you in the way of knowin' more about Ireland 
nor I can tell you, Henry," Mr. Quinn said to his son on 
the evening before Marsh arrived, “an' a lot more nor 
you'll learn at Rumpell's, or, for that matter, at Trinity." 

“Then why do you want me to go to Trinity?" Henry 
asked, still unable to conceal his disappointment at not be- 
ing sent to Cambridge with his friends. 

“I've told you that already," Mr. Quinn replied firmly, 
closing his lips down tightly. “I want you to have Irish 
friends as well as English friends, and I've learned this 
much from livin', that a man seldom makes friends . . . 
friends, mind you . . . after he's twenty-five. You only 
make acquaintances after that age. I'd like well to think 
there were people in Ireland that had as tight a hold on 
your friendship, Henry, as Gilbert Farlow and them other 
lads have. . . . An' there's another thing," he went on, 
leaning forward as he spoke and wagging his forefinger at 
Henry. “If you go to Trinity with a kindly feelin' for 
Ireland, it'll be something to think there's one man in the 
place that has a decent thought for his country an' isn't 
an imitation Englishman. Who knows what good you 
might do there?" He let his speculations consume him. 
“You might change the character of the whole college. You 
. . . you might make it Irish. You . . . you might be the 
means of turnin' the Provost into an Irishman an' start him 
takin' an interest in his country. The oul' lad might turn 
Fenian an ' get transported or hung ! . . . " 

When he had ceased to speculate on what might happen 
61 


CHANGING WINDS 


6a 

if Henry began an Irish crusade in Trinity, he spoke again 
of Marsh. 

“You 11 like him,’’ he said. “I know you will. He’s a 
bit off his head, of course, but that ’s neither here nor there. 
The man’s a scholar an’ I think he writes bits of poetry. 
I ’ve never seen any of his pieces, but somebody told me he 
wrote things. I ’d like well to have a poet in the house ! ’ ’ 

“Is he a Catholic?” Henry asked. 

His father nodded his head. “An’ very religious, too, I 
believe,” he said. “Still, that’s neither here nor there. I 
met him up in Dublin. Ernest Harper told me about 
him ! ’ ’ 

Ernest Harper was the painter-poet who had influenced 
so many young men in Ireland, and Mr. Quinn had come 
into the circle of his friends through the Irish co-opera- 
tive movement. He had made a special visit to Dublin 
to consult Harper about the education of his son, tell- 
ing him of his desire that Henry should have a strong na- 
tional sense . . . “but none of your damned theosophy, 
mind! ...” and Harper had recommended John Marsh to 
him. Marsh had lately taken his B.A. degree and he was 
anxious to earn money in circumstances that would enable 
him to proceed to his M.A. 

“That lad’ll do rightly,” said Mr. Quinn, and he ar- 
ranged to meet Marsh in the queer, untidy room in Mer- 
rion Square where Harper edited his weekly paper. “He 
has the walls of the place covered with pictures of big 
women with breasts like balloons,” Mr. Quinn said after- 
wards when he tried to describe Ernest Harper’s office, 
“an’ he talks to you about fairies ’til you’d near believe a 
leprechaun ’ud hop out of the coalscuttle if you lifted the 
lid!” 

Soon afterwards, they met, and Mr. Quinn explained his 
purpose to Marsh. “I’m not a Nationalist, thank God, 
nor a Catholic, thank God again, but I’m Irish an’ I want 
my son to know about Ireland an’ to feel as Irish as I do 
myself!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


63 


Marsh talked about Nationalism and Freedom and Eng- 
lish Misrule, hut Mr. Quinn waved his hands before his 
face and made a wry expression at him. “All your talk 
about the freedom of Ireland is twaddle, John Marsh . . . 
if you don’t mind. I’ll begin callin’ you John Marsh this 
minute ... an’ I may as well tell you I don’t believe in 
the tyranny of England. The English aren’t cruel — - 
they’re stupid. That’s what they are — Thick! As thick 
as they can be, an’ that’s as thick as God thinks it’s de- 
cent to let any man be! But they’re not cruel. They do 
cruel things sometimes because they don’t know any bet- 
ter, an’ they think they’re doin’ the right things when 
they’re only doin’ the stupid thing. That’s where we 
come in! Our job is to teach the English how to do the 
right thing.” They smiled at him. “An’ I’m not cod- 
din,’ ” he went on. “I mean every word I say. It’s not 
Home Kule for Ireland that’s needed — it’s Irish Rule for 
England ; an’ I’ll maintain that ’til my dyin’ day. . . . But 
that’s neither here nor there. I think you’re a fool, John 
Marsh, to go about dreamin’ of an Irish Republic . . . 
you don’t mind me callin’ you a fool, do you? . . . but 
you love Ireland, and I’d forgive a man a great deal for 
that, so if you’ll come an’ be tutor to my son. I’ll be 
obliged to you!” 

And John Marsh, smiling at Mr. Quinn, had consented. 

“That’s right,” Mr. Quinn said, gripping the young 
man’s hand and wringing it heartily. “I like him,” he 
added, turning to Ernest Harper, “an’ he’ll be good for 
Henry, an’ I daresay I’ll be good for him. You’ve an aw- 
ful lot of slummage in your skull,” he continued, ad- 
dressing Marsh again, “but begod I’ll clear that out!” 

“Slummage?” Marsh asked questioningly. 

“Aye. Do you not know what slummage is?” 

He described it as a heap of steamy, flabby grain that is 
rejected by distillers after the spirit has been extracted from 
it. “An’ it’s only fit to feed pigs with, “he said, ending 
his description. “An’ the kind of stuff you’re lettin’ out of 


64 


CHANGING WINDS 


you now is only fit for pub-patriots. How soon can you 
come to Ballymartin. The sooner the better ! ’ ’ 

He tried to drop the discussion of politics, but was so 
fond of it himself that before he had settled the date of 
Marsh’s appearance at Ballymartin, he was in the middle of 
another discussion. His head was full of theories about 
Ireland and about the world, and he loved to let his the- 
ories out of his head for an airing. He very earnestly de- 
sired to keep Ireland different from England. ‘Ireland’s 
the ‘country’ of this kingdom, an’ England’s the ‘town,’ ” 
he sometimes said, or when his mood was bitter, he would 
say that he wished to preserve Ireland as a place in which 
gentlemen could live in comfort, leaving England to be the 
natural home of manufacturers and mill-owners. 

“But it’s no good talkin’ of separatin’ the two coun- 
tries,” he said to Marsh, “an’ it’s no good talkin’ of 
drivin’ the English out of Ireland because you can’t tell 
these times who is English an’ who is Irish. We’ve min- 
gled our blood too closely for any one to be able to tell 
who’s what. If you started clearin’ out the English, you’d 
mebbe clear me out, for my family was planted here by 
William of Orange . . . an’ the damnedest set of scoundrels 
they were, too, by all accounts! ... an’ mebbe. Marsh, 
you yourself ’ud be cleared out! . . . Aye, an’ you, too, 
Ernest Harper, for all you’re waggin’ your oul’ red beard 
at me. You’re Scotch, man, Scotch, to the backbone! . . .” 

Harper rose at him, wagging his red beard, and filling 
the air with terrible prophecies ! . . . 

“Ah, quit, man!” said Mr. Quinn, and he turned and 
winked at Marsh. “Do you know what religion he is?” 
he said, pointing his finger at Harper. “He’s a Noncon- 
formin’ Theosophist ! ” And he roared at his own joke. 

“You can no more separate the destinies of England an’ 
Ireland in the world,” he went on, “nor you can separate 
the waters of the Liffey an’ the Mersey in the Irish Sea. 
Bedam, if you can!” 

Mr. Quinn liked to throw out these aphorisms, and he 


CHANGING WINDS 


65 


spent a great deal of time in inventing them. Once he 
flung a company of Dublin gossips into a rage because he 
declared that Dublin was called “the whispering gallery” 
and “the city of dreadful whispers” because it was popu- 
lated by the descendants of informers and spies. That, he 
declared, was why Dublin people were so fond of tittle- 
tattle and tale-bearing and scandal-mongering. ‘ ‘ The 
English hanged or transported every decent-minded man 
in the towm, an’ left only the spies an’ informers, an’ the 
whole of you are descended from that breed. That’s why 
you can’t keep anything to yourselves, but have to run 
abut the town tollin’ everybody all the secrets you know!” 
And he charged them with constantly giving each other 
away. He repeated this generalisation about the Dublin 
people to John Marsh. “An’ I tell you what’ll happen 
to you, young fellow, one of these days. You’ll be hanged 
or shot or transported or somethin,’ an’ half the people of 
this place’ll be runnin’ like lightnin’ to swear an informa- 
tion against you, as sure as Fate. If ever you think of 
startin’ a rebellion, John Marsh, go up to Belfast an’ start 
it. People ’ll be loyal to you there, but in this place they ’d 
sell you for a pint of Guinness!” 

He was half serious in his warning to Marsh, but . . . 
“I should be glad to die for Ireland,” Marsh replied, and 
it was said so simply that there was no priggishness in it. 
“I can think of no finer fate for an Irishman.” 

Mr. Quinn made a gesture of impatience. “It ’ud be a 
damn sight better to live for Ireland, ’ ’ he exclaimed angrily. 

2 

Henry was in the garden when John Marsh arrived, ac- 
companied by Mr. Quinn. Two letters had come to him 
that morning from England — one from Gilbert Farlow and 
the other from Mary Graham, and he was reading them 
again for the seventh or eighth time when the dogcart 
drove up to the house. 


66 


CHANGING WINDS 


My dear old ass, Gilbert wrote, why grizzle and grouse 
at the Bally Awful! That’s my name now for things 
which can’t he helped. I’ve taught it to Ninian, hut he 
persists in calling it the Bloody Awful, which is low. He 
says that doesn’t matter because he is low. Roger and I 
have had to clout his head rather severely lately ... it 
took two of us to do it .. . Roger held his arms while I 
clouted him . . . because he has become fearfully demo- 
cratic, meaning by that, that anybody who knows more 
than his alphabet is an enemy of the poor. Roger and I 
are dead nuts on aristocracy at present. We go about say- 
ing, ^^My God, I’m a superman!” and try to look like 
Bernard Shaw. Roger only succeeds in looking like Little 
Lord Fauntleroy. But all this is away from the point, 
which is, ivhy grizzle and grouse at the Bally Awful. If 
your papa will send you to T.G.D., you must just grin 
and bear it, my lad. I’ve never met anybody from Trin- 
ity ... I suppose people do come out of it after they get 
into it .. . but if you’re careful and remember the exam- 
ple of your little friends, Gilbert and Ninian and Roger, 
you’ll come to no harm. And when you do come to Lon- 
don, we’ll try to improve what’s left of your poor mind. 
It would be splendid to go to Ballymartin for the summer. 
Tell your papa that Ninian and Roger and I solemnly 
cursed him three times for preventing you from coming to 
Cambridge, and then gave him three cheers for asking us 
to Ireland. The top of the morning to you, my broth of 
a boy, and the heavens be your bed, bedad and bejabers, as 
you say in your country, according to Punch. Yours ever, 
Gilbert. 

P.S. What about that two bob you owe mef 

Mary’s letter was shorter than Gilbert’s. 

I think it’s awfully horrid of your father not to let you 
go to Cambridge with Ninian and the others. I was so 
looking forward to going up in May Week and so was 
Mother. Of course, we shall go anyhow, but it woidd 


CHANGING WINDS 


67 


have been much nicer if you had been there. You would 
love Boveyhayne if you were here now. The hedges are 
full of wild roses and hazelnuts and there is a lovely lot 
of valariu on our wall. Old Widger says there will be a 
lovely lot of blackberries in September if everything goes 
well. I went out in a boat yesterday with Tom Yeo and I 
caught six dozen mackerel. You would have blubbed if 
you’d seen them flopping about in the bottom of the boat 
and looking so nice, and they were nice to eat. I love 
mackerel, don’t you? Mother sends her love. Do write 
soon. I love getting letters and you write such nice ones. 
Your affectionate friend, Mary Graham. P.S. Love. 

Mary always signed herself his affectionate friend. He 
had tried to make her sign herself his loving sweetheart, 
but she said she did not like to do that. 

3 

He hurriedly put the letters away, and rose to greet 
John Marsh who came across the lawn to him, talking to 
Mr. Quinn. 

‘‘This is John Marsh, Henry, Mr. Quinn said wdien he 
came up to him, and Henry and Marsh shook hands and 
murmured greetings to each other. “I’ll leave you both 
here to get acquainted with each other, ’ ’ Mr. Quinn contin- 
ued. “ I ’ve a few things to do about the house ! ” He went 
off at once, leaving them together, but before he had gone 
far he turned and shouted to Henry, “You can show him 
through the grounds ! He T1 want to stretch his legs after 
bein’ so long in the train!” 

“Very well, father!” Henry answered, and turned to 
Marsh. 

His first impression of his tutor was one of insignifi- 
cance. Marsh’s clothes were cheap and ready-made, and 
they seemed to be a size too large for him. That, indeed, 
was characteristic of him, that he should always seem to be 


68 


CHANGING WINDS 


wearing things which were too big for him. His tie, too, 
was rising over the top of his collar. . . . But the sense of 
U^significance disappeared from Henry’s mind almost im- 
mediately after Marsh had offered his hand to him and had 
smiled; and following the sense of insignificance came a 
feeling of personal shame that was incomprehensible to him 
until he discovered that his shame was caused because he 
had thought slightingly of Marsh, even though he had 
done so only for a few moments, and had allowed his mind 
to be concerned about the trivialities of clothes when it 
should have been concerned with the nature of the man 
^who wore them. Henry’s mind was oddly perverse ; he had 
been as fierce in his denunciation of convention as ever 
Gilbert Farlow had been, but nevertheless he clung to con- 
ventional things with something like desperation. It was 
characteristic of him that he should palliate his submis- 
sion to the conventional thing by inventing a sensible ex- 
cuse for it. He would say that such things were too triv- 
ial to be worth the trouble of a fight or a revolt, and de- 
clare that one should save one’s energies for bigger bat- 
tles ; but the truth was that he had not the moral courage 
to flout a convention, and he had a queer, instinctive dis- 
like of people who had the courage to do so. . . . He knew 
that this habit of his was likely to distort his judgments 
and make him shrink from ordeals of faith, and very often 
in his mind he tried to subdue his cowardly fear of con- 
ventional disapproval . . . without success. But John 
Marsh had the power to conquer people. The gentleness of 
him, the kindly smile and the look of high intent, made 
men of meaner motive feel unaccountably ashamed. 

He was a man of middle height and slender build. His 
high, broad brow was covered by heavy, rough, tufty hair 
that was brushed cleanly from his forehead and cut tidily 
about the neck so that he did not look unkempt. His long, 
straight nose was as large as the nose of a successful busi- 
ness man, but it was not bulbous nor were the nostrils wide 
and distended. It was a delicately-shaped and pointed 


CHANGING WINDS 


69 


nose, with narrow nostrils that were as sensitive as the 
nostrils of a racehorse: an adventurous, pointing nose 
that would lead its owner to valiant lengths, but would 
never lead him into low enterprises. He had grey eyes 
that were quick to perceive, so that he understood things 
speedily, and the kindly, forbearing look in them promised 
that his understanding would not be stiffened by harsh- 
ness, that it would be accompanied by sympathy so keen 
that, were it not for the hint of humour which they also held, 
he might almost have been mawkish, a sentimentalist too 
easily dissolved in tears. His thick eyebrows clung closely 
to his eyes, and gave him a look of introspection that miti- 
gated the shrewdness of his pointing nose. There was some 
weakness, but not much, in the full, projecting lower lip 
and the slightly receding chin that caused his short, tight- 
ened upper lip to look indrawn and strained ; and the big, 
ungainly, jutting ears consorted oddly with the serious 
look of high purpose that marked his face in repose. It 
was as though Puck had turned poet and then had turned 
preacher. One looked at the fleshy lower lip and the jut- 
ting ears, and thought of a careless, impish creature; one 
looked at the shapely, pointing nose and the kindly, un- 
flinching eyes, and thought of a man reckless of himself in 
the pursuit of some flne purpose. One saw immediately 
that he was a man who could be moved easily when his 
sympathies were touched . . . but that he could hardly be 
dissuaded from the fulfilment of his good intent. His Na- 
tionalism was like a cleansing fire; it consumed every im- 
pure thing that might penetrate his life. It was so potent 
that he did ridiculous things in asserting it. . . . It was 
typical of him that he should gaelicise his name, and 
equally typical of him that he should be undecided about 
the correct spelling of ‘‘John^^in the ancient Irish tongue. 
He had called himself ^^Sean” Marsh, and then had called 
himself ‘‘Shane’' and “Shaun” and “Shawn.” Once, for 
a while, he transformed “John” into “Eoin” and then, 
tiring of it, had reverted to “Sean.” But this restlessness 


TO 


CHANGING WINDS 


over his name was not a sign of general instability of pur- 
pose. He might vary in the expression of his belief, but 
the belief itself was as immovable as the mountains. 

4 

It was said of him that on one occasion he had taken a 
cheque to a bank in Dublin to be cashed. An English 
editor had printed one of his poems and had paid for 
it . . . and he was not accustomed to receiving money for 
his poems, which were printed mostly in little Irish propa- 
ganda journals! He had endorsed the cheque in Gaelic, 
and the puzzled bank manager had demanded that it should 
be endorsed in English. . . . Marsh had given him a lec- 
ture on Irish history that lasted for the better part of half- 
an-hour . . . and then, because the manager looked so 
frightened, he had consented to sign his name in English. 

5 

They left the garden and walked slowly to the top of an 
ascending field where an old farm-horse, quit now of work, 
grazed in peace. It raised its head as they walked towards 
it, and gazed at them with blurred eyes, and then ambled 
to them. They stood beside it for a few moments while 
Marsh patted its neck with one hand and allowed it to 
nuzzle in the palm of the other. ‘‘I love beasts,’^ he said, 
“Dogs and cats and birds and horses and cows ... I think 
I love cows best because they Ve got such big, soft eyes and 
look so stupid and reproachful . . . except that dogs are 
very nice and companionable and faithful . . . but so are 
cats. . . .^^ 

“Faithful? Cats?’’ Henry asked. 

“Oh, yes . . . quite faithful if they like you. Why 
should they be faithful if they don’t? Poor, old chap! 
Poor, old chap!” he -murmured, thrusting his fingers 
through the horse’s worn mane. “Of course, horses are 


CHANGING WINDS 


71 


very nice, too,’’ he went on. ^‘And birds! ... I suppose 
one loves all animals. One has to be very brutal to hurt 
an animal, hasn’t one?” 

Henry laughed. “The Irish are cruel to animals,” he 
said, ‘ ‘but the English aren ’t 1 ” 

Marsh flushed. “I’ve never been in England,” he re- 
plied, looking away. 

“Never?” Henry exclaimed. 

“No, and I shall never go there!” 

There was a sudden ferocity in his voice that startled 
Henry. “But why?” he asked. 

“Why? ...” Marsh’s voice changed its note and be- 
came quiet again. “I’m Irish,” he said. “That’s why! 
I don’t think that any Irishman ought to put his foot in 
England until Ireland is free ! ’ ’ 

Henry snapped at him impatiently. “I hate all that 
kind of talk,” he said. 

Marsh looked at him in astonishment. “You hate all 
. . . what talk?” he asked. 

“All that talk about Ireland being free !” 

“But don’t you want Ireland to be free?” Marsh asked. 

They had walked on across the fleld until they came to a 
barred gate, and Marsh climbed on to the top bar and 
perched himself there while Henry stood with his back 
against the gate and fondled the muzzle of the horse which 
had followed after them. 

“I don’t know what you mean when you say you want 
Ireland to be free!” Henry exclaimed. 

“Don’t know what I mean! ...” Marsh’s voice be- 
came very tense again, and he slipped down from the gate 
and turned quickly to explain his meaning to Henry, but 
Henry did not wait for the explanation. “No,” he inter- 
rupted quickly. “Of course, I don’t know much about 
these things, but I ’ve read some books that father gave me, 
and I’ve talked to my friends . . . one of them, Gilbert 
Parlow, is rather clever and he knows a lot about politics 
. . . he argues with his father about them . . . and I can’t 


72 


CHANGING WINDS 


see that there’s much difference between England and Ire- 
land. People here don’t seem to me to be any worse off 
than people over there!” 

“It isn’t a question of being worse off or better off,” 
Marsh replied. “It’s a question of being free. The Eng- 
lish are governed by the English. The Irish aren’t gov- 
erned by the Irish. That’s the difference between us. 
What does it matter what your condition is so long as you 
know that you are governed by a man of your own breed 
and blood, and that at any minute you may be in his place 
and he in yours, and yet you’ll be men of the same breed 
and blood? I’d rather be governed badly by men of my 
own breed than be governed well by another breed. ...” 

Henry remembered Ulster and his father and all his kins- 
men scattered about the North who had sworn to die in the 
last ditch rather than be governed by Nationalists. 
“That’s all very well,” he said, “but there are plenty of 
people in Ireland who don’t want to be governed by your 
breed, well or bad 1 ’ ’ 

“They’d consent if they thought we had the ability to 
govern well,” Marsh went on. “Anyhow, we couldn’t 
govern Ireland worse than the English have governed it I ” 

‘ ‘ Some people think you could ! . . . ” 

But Marsh was in no mood to listen to objections. “You 
can’t be free until you are equal with other people, and we 
aren’t equal with the English. We aren’t equal with any- 
body but subject people. And they look down on us, the 
English do. We’re lazy and dirty and ignorant and super- 
stitious and priest-ridden and impractical and . . . and 
comic! . . . My God, comic! Whenever I see an Eng- 
lishman in Ireland, running round and feeling superior, I 
want to wring his damned neck . . . and I should hate to 
wring any one’s neck.” 

Henry tried to interject a remark, but Marsh hurried 
on, disregarding his attempt to speak. 

‘ ‘ How would they like it if we went over to their country 
and made remarks about them?” he exclaimed. “My 


CHANGING WINDS 


IS 

brother went to London once and he saw people making 
love in public . . . fellows and girls hugging each other 
in the street and sprawling about in the parks ... all 
over each other . . . and no one took any notice. It 
wasn’t decent. . . . How would they like it if we went 
over there and made remarks about that? ...” 

Henry insisted on speaking. “But why should you hate 
the English?” he demanded, and added, “I don’t hate 
them. I like them!” 

“I didn’t say I hated the English,” Marsh replied. “I 
don’t. I don’t hate any race. That would be ridiculous. 
But I hate the belief that the English are fit to govern us, 
when they’re not, and that we’re not fit to govern our- 
selves, when we are. I’d rather be governed by Germans 
than be governed by the English! ...” Henry moved 
away impatiently. “Yes, I would,” Marsh continued. 
“At all events, the Germans would govern us well ” 

“You’d hate to be governed by Germans!” 

“ I ’d hate to be governed by any but Irishmen ; but the 
Germans wouldn’t make the muddles and messes that the 
English make! ...” 

“You don’t know that,” Henry said. 

But Marsh would not take up the point. He swung off 
on a generalisation. “There won’t be any peace or happi- 
ness in Ireland,” he said, “until the English are driven out 
of it. Even the Orangemen don’t like them. They’re 
always making fun of them ! . . . ” 

Henry repeated his assertion that he liked the English, 
conscious that there was something feeble in merely re- 
peating it. He wished that he could say something as 
forceful as Marsh’s statement of his dislike of England, 
but he was unable to think of anything adequate to say. 
“I like the English,” he said again, and when he thought 
over that talk, there seemed to be nothing else to say. How 
could he feel about the English as John Marsh, who had 
never lived in England, felt? How could he dislike them 
when he remembered Gilbert Parlow and Roger Carey and 


74 } 


CHANGING WINDS 


Ninian Graham and Mrs. Graham and Old Widger and 
Tom Yeo and Jim Kattenhury . . . and Mary Graham. 
His father had always spoken contemptuously of English- 
men, but he had never been moved by this violent antipathy 
to them which moved Marsh . . . and most of his talk 
against England was only talk, intended to sting the Eng- 
lish out of their complacency . . . and he was eager to 
preserve the Union between the two countries. But Marsh 
wished to be totally separate from England. He was 
vague, very vague, about points of defence, and he boggled 
badly when Henry, trying to think like a statesman, talked 
of an Army and a Navy . . . his mind wandered into the 
mists of Tolstoyianism and then he ended by suggesting that 
England would attend to these matters in self-defence. He 
could not satisfy Henry’s superficial enquiries about the 
possibilities of trade conducted in Gaelic . . . but he was 
positive about the need for separation, complete and ir- 
remediable separation, from England. 

“We’re separated from them physically,” he said, “and 
I want us to be separated from them politically and spirit- 
ually. They’re a debased people ! ...” Henry muttered 
angrily at that, for his mind was still full of Mary Graham. 
“They’re a debased people . . . that’s why I want to get 
free of them . . . and all the debasing things in Ireland 
are part of the English taint. We’ve nothing in commop 
with them. They’re a race of factory-hands and manu- 
facturers ; we ’re a race of farmers and poets ; and you can 
never reconcile us. All you can do is to make us like 
them ... or worse!” 

Henry remembered how his father had fulminated 
against the smooth Englishman who had proposed to turn 
Glendalough into a place like the Potteries or Wigan. 

“But isn’t there some middle course?” he said weakly. 
“Isn’t there some way of getting at the minerals of Wick- 
low without making Glendalough a place like Wigan?” 

“Not if the English have anything to do with it,” Marsh 
answered. “I don’t know what Wigan is like ... I sup- 


CHANGING WINDS 


75 


pose it^s horrible . . . but it’s natural to Englishmen. 
They trail that sort of place behind them wherever they go. 
Slums and sickness and fat, rich men! If they had any- 
thing to do with developing Wicklow they’d make it 
stink! . . 

‘‘Well, I don’t know,” Henry said wearily, for he soon 
grew tired of arguments in which he was an unequal par- 
ticipator. “I like the English and I can’t see any good 
in just hating them!” 

“They found a decent, generous race in Ireland,” Marsh 
exclaimed, “and they’ve turned it into a race of cadgers. 
Your father admits that. Ask him what he thinks of Ar- 
thur Balfour and his Congested Districts Board! ...” 

They went hack to the house, and as they went, they 
talked of books, and as they talked of books. Marsh’s mind 
became assuaged. He had lately published a little volume 
of poems and he spoke of it to Henry in a shy fashion, 
though his eyes brightened and gleamed as he repeated 
something that Ernest Harper had said of them . . . but 
then Ernest Harper always spoke kindly of the work of 
young, sincere men. 

“I’ll give you a copy if you like,” Marsh said to Henry. 

“Oh, thank you!” Henry exclaimed. “I should love to 
have it. I suppose,” he went on, “it’s very exciting to 
have a book published.” 

“I cried when I first saw my book,” Marsh answered 
very simply. “I suppose women do that when they first 
see their babies ! . . . ” 

But Henry did not know what women do when they first 
see their babies. 


THE SIXTH CHAPTER 


1 

All through the summer, Henry and John Marsh worked 
together, making Irishry, as Marsh called it. They studied 
the conventional subjects in preparation for T.C.D. but 
their chief studies were of the Irish tongue and Irish his- 
tory. Marsh was a Gaelic scholar, and he had made many 
translations of Gaelic poems and stories, some of which 
seemed to Henry to be of extraordinary beauty, but most 
of which seemed to him to be so thoughtless that they were 
merely lengths of words. There appeared to be no con- 
nexion between these poems and tales and the life he him- 
self led — and Marshes point was that the connexion was 
vital. One evening, Henry, who had been reading “The 
Trojan Women of Euripides, turned to Marsh and said 
that the Greek tragedy seemed nearer to him than any of 
the Gaelic stories and poems. He expressed his meaning 
badly, but what it came to was this, that the continuity of 
life was not broken in the Euripidean plays: the life of 
which Henry was part flowed directly from the life of 
which Euripides was part; he had not got the sensation 
that he was a stranger looking on at alien things when he 
had read “The Trojan Women.’’ “I can imagine all that 
happening now,” he said, “but I can’t imagine any of that 
Gaelic life recurring. I don’t feel any life in it. It’s like 
something . . . something odd suddenly butting into 
things . . . and then suddenly butting out again . . . and 
leaving no explanation behind it!”' 

He tried again, with greater success, to explain what he 
meant. “It’s like reading topical references in old books, ’ ’ 

76 


CHANGING WINDS 


77 


he said. ‘‘They mean nothing to ns even when there are 
footnotes to explain them!” 

Marsh had listened patiently to him, though there was 
anger in his heart. “You think that all that life is over?” 
he said, and Henry nodded his head. 

“Listen,” said Marsh, taking a letter from his pocket, 
“here is a poem, translated from Irish, that was sent to me 
by a friend of mine in Dublin. His name is Galway, and 
I’d like you to know him. Listen! It’s called ‘A Song 
for Mary Magdalene.’ ” 

He read the poem in a slow, crooning voice that seemed 
always on the point of becoming ridiculous, but never did 
become so. 


O woman of the gleaming hair 

(Wild hair that won men’s gaze to thee), 

Weary thou turnest from the common stare, 

For the Shuiler i Christ is calling thee, 

O woman with the wild thing’s heart, 

Old sin hath set a snare for thee : 

In the forest ways forespent thou art. 

But the hunter Christ shall pity thee. 

O woman spendthrift of thyself, 

Spendthrift of all the love in thee. 

Sold unto sin for little pelf. 

The captain Christ shall ransom thee. 

O woman that no lover’s kiss 

(Tho’ many a kiss was given thee) 

Could slake thy love, is it not for this 
The hero Christ shall die for thee? 

They were quiet for a while, and then Marsh turned to 
Henry and said, “Is that alien to you?” 

“No,” he answered, “but I did not say that it was all 
alien! . . 

“Or this?” Marsh interrupted, taking up the manuscript 

1 Shuiler : a tramp or beggar. 


78 


CHANGING WINDS 


again. ‘‘Galway sent these translations to me so that I 
might be the first to see them. He always does that. This 
one is called ‘Lullaby of a Woman of the Mountain.^ 

Little gold head, my house’s candle, 

You will guide all wayfarers that walk this country. 

Little soft mouth that my breast has known, 

Mary will kiss you as she passes. 

Little round cheek, O smoother than satin, 
losa will lay His hand upon you. 

Mary’s kiss on my baby’s mouth, 

Christ’s little hand on my darling’s cheek! 

House, be still, and ye little grey mice. 

Lie close to-night in your hidden lairs. 

Moths on the window, fold your wings. 

Little black chafers, silence your humming. 

Plover and curlew fly not over my house, 

Do not speak, wild barnacle, passing over this mountain. 

Things of the mountain that wake in the night time. 

Do not stir to-night till the daylight whitens. 

“That’s alive, isn’t it?” Marsh, now openly angry, de- 
manded. “Do you think that song doesn’t kindle the 
hearts of mothers all over the world? ... I can imagine 
Eve crooning it to little Cain and Abel, and I can imagine 
a womah in the Combe crooning it to her child! . . .” 
The Combe was a tract of slum in Dublin. “It’s universal 
and everlasting. You can’t kill that!” 

‘ ‘ Then why has it got lost ? ’ ’ 

“It isn’t lost — it’s only covered up. Our task is to dig 
it out. It’s worth digging out, isn’t it? The people in 
the West still sing songs like that. Isn’t it worth while to 
try and get all our people to sing them instead of singing 
English music-hall stuff? ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


79 


2 

It was in that spirit that ]\Iarsh started the Gaelic class 
in Ballymartin. “And the Gaelic games,” he said to 
Henry, ‘ ‘ we 11 revive them too ! ” Twice a week, he taught 
the rudiments of the Irish language to a mixed class of 
boys and girls, and every Saturday he led the Ballymartin 
hurley team into one of Mr. Quinn ^s fields. ... 

There had been difficulty in establishing the mixed 
classes. The farmers and the villagers, having first de- 
clared that Gaelic was useless to them — “they’d be a lot 
better learnin’ shorthand!” said John McCracken — then 
declared that they did not care to have their daughters 
“trapesin’ about the loanies, lettin’ on to be learnin’ Irish, 
an’ them only up to devilment with the lads 1” But Marsh 
overcame that difficulty, as he overcame most of his diffi- 
culties, by persistent attack; and in the end, the Gaelic 
class was established, and the Ballymartin boys and girls 
were set to the study of O’Growney’s primer. Henry was 
employed as Marsh’s monitor. His duty was to supervise 
the elementary pupils, leaving the more advanced ones to 
the care of Marsh. It was while he was teaching the Gaelic 
alphabet to his class, that Henry first met Sheila Morgan. 

She came into the schoolroom one night out of a drift 
of rain, and as she stood in the doorway, laughing because 
the wind had caught her umbrella and almost torn it out 
of her hands, he could see the rain-drops glistening on her 
cheeks. She put the umbrella in a corner of the room, 
leaving it open so that it might dry more quickly, and then 
she shook her long dark hair back and wiped the rain from 
her face. He waited until she had taken off her mackintosh 
and hung it up in the cloakroom, and then he went forward 
to her. 

“Have you come to join the class?” he asked, and she 
smiled and nodded her head. “It’s a coarse sort of a 
night, ’ ’ she added, coming into the classroom. 

He did not know her name, and he wondered where her 


80 


CHANGING WINDS 


home was. He knew everybody in Ballymartin, and many 
of the people in the country outside it, but he had never 
seen Sheila Morgan before. 

*‘I thought I might as well come,’^ she said, ^‘but I’m 
only here for a while ! ’ ’ 

Then she did not belong to the village. ^‘Yes? . . 
he said. 

“It’s quaren dull in the country,” she continued, “an’ 
the classes’ll help to pass the time. I wish it was dancin’, 
but!” 

Dancing! They had not made any arrangements for 
dancing, though the Gaels were very nimble on their feet. 
He glanced at Marsh reproachfully. Why had Marsh omit- 
ted to revive the Gaelic dances ? 

“Perhaps,” he said to Sheila, “we can have dancing 
classes later on. ...” 

“I’ll mebbe be gone before you have them,” she an- 
swered. 

‘ ‘ How long are you staying f or ? ” he asked. 

“I don’t know. I’m stopping with my uncle Matthew 
. . .it’s him has Hamilton’s farm . . . an’ I’m stoppin’ 
’til he knows how his health’ll be. He’s bad. ...” 

He remembered Matthew Hamilton. “Is he ill?” he 
said. 

“Aye. He’s been sick this while past, an’ now he’s 
worse, an’ my aunt Kate asked me to come an’ stop with 
them to help them in the house. He’s not near himself at 
all. You’d think a pity of him if you seen the way he’s 
failed next to nothin’. ... Is it hard to learn Irish?” 

“You’d better come an’ try for yourself,” he replied, 
and then he led her up to Marsh and told him that a new 
pupil had come to join the class. There was some awk- 
wardness about names. . . . “Och, I never told you my 
name,” she said, laughing as she spoke. “Sheila Mor- 
gan!” she continued. “I live in County Down, but I’m 
stayin’ with my uncle Matthew,” she explained to Marsh. 

“Do you know any Gaelic at all?” Marsh asked. 


CHANGING WINDS 


81 


‘‘No,’’ she replied. “ I never learned it. Are you goin’ 
to have any dancin’ classes?” 

Henry insisted that they ought to have had dancing 
classes as well as a hurley team. “The hurley’s all right 
for the boys,” he said, “but we’ve nothing for the 
girls. ...” 

“But you’d want boys at the dancin’ as well,” Sheila 
interrupted. “I can’t bear dancin’ with girls!” 

“No, of course not,” said Henry. 

Marsh considered. “Who’s to teach the dancing?” he 
asked, adding, “I can’t!” 

“I’d be willin’ to do that,” Sheila said. “Mebbe you’d 
join the class yourself, Mr. Marsh?” 

Marsh laughed, but did not answer. 

“It’ll be great value,” she went on. “There’s nothin’ 
to do in the evenin’s . . . nothin’ at all ... an’ it’s des- 
pert dull at night with nothin’ to do! . . .” 

“ I ’ll think about it, ’ ’ said Marsh. “You can begin your 
Gaelic study now,” he added. “Mr. Quinn ’ll give you a 
lesson! . . 


3 

It was J amesey McKeown who caused the decision to hold 
the dancing classes to be made as quickly as it was. J ame- 
sey was one of the pupils in the advanced section of the 
Gaelic class ... a bright-witted boy of thirteen, with a 
quick, sharp way. One day. Marsh and Henry had climbed 
a steep hill outside the village, and when they reached the 
top of it, they found Jamesey lying there, looking down on 
the fields beneath. His chin was resting in the cup of his 
upturned palms. 

“God save you, Jamesey!” said Marsh, and “God save 
you kindly!” Jamesey answered. 

The greeting and the reply are not native to Ulster, but 
Marsh had made them part of the Gaelic studies, and when- 
ever he encountered friends he always saluted them so. 


8a 


CHANGING WINDS 


His pupils, falling in with his whim, replied to his salute 
as he wished them to reply, but the older people merely 
nodded their heads or said “It’s a soft day!” or “It’s a 
brave day!” or, more abruptly, “Morra, Mr. Marsh!” 
The Protestants among them suspected that the Gaelic sal- 
utation was a form of furtive Popery. . . . 

They sat down beside the boy. “I suppose you’ll be 
leaving school soon, Jamesey?” Marsh asked. 

“Aye, I will in a while,” Jamesey answered. 

“What class are you in?” 

“ I ’m a monitor, ^Ir. ]\Iarsh. I ’m in my first year ! . . . ” 

Henry sat up and joined in the conversation. “Then 
you’re going to be a teacher?” he said. 

“No, I’m not,” Jamesey replied. “My ma put me in 
for the monitor to get the bit of extra education. That’s 
all!” 

“What are you going to be, Jamesey? A farmer?” said 
Marsh. 

“No. I wouldn’t be a farmer for the world! ...” 

“But why?” 

The boy changed his position and faced round to them. 
“Sure, there’s nothin’ to do but work from the dawn till 
the dark,” he said, “an’ you never get no diversion at all. 
I’m quaren tired of this place, I can tell you, an’ my ma’s 
tired of it too. She wudden be here if she could help it, 
but sure she can’t. It’s terrible in the winter, an’ the win’ 
fit to blow the head off you, an’ you with nothin’ to do 
on’y look after a lot of ouP cows an’ pigs an’ things. I’m 
goin ’ to a town as soon as I ’m oul ’ enough ! . . . ” 

They talked to him of the beauty of the country. . . . 

“Och, it’s all right for a holiday in the summer,” he 
said. 

. . . and they talked to him of the fineness of a farmer’s 
life, but he would not agree with them. A farmer’s life 
was too hard and too dull. He was set on joining his 
brother in Glasgow. . . . 

“What does your brother do, Jamesey?” Marsh asked. 


CHANGING WINDS 


83 


‘‘He’s a barman.” 

‘ ‘ A barman ! ’ ’ they repeated, a little blankly. 

“Aye. That’s what I’m goin^ to be ... in the same 
place as him!” 

They did not speak for a while. It seemed to both of 
them to be incredible that any one could wish to exchange 
the loveliness of the Antrim country for a Glasgow 

bar. . . . 

“What hours does your brother work?” Marsh asked 
drily. 

“He works from eight in the mornin’ till eight at night, 
an’ it’s later on Saturdays, but he has a half-day a week 
til himself, an’ he has all day Sunday. They don’t drink 
on Sunday in Glasgow 1 ’ ’ 

Marsh smiled. “Don’t they?” he said. 

“It’s long hours,” Jamesey admitted, “but he has great 
diversion. D’ye know this, Mr. Marsh!” he continued, 
rolling over on his side and speaking more quickly, “he can 
go to a music-hall twice on the one night an’ hear all the 
latest songs for tuppence. That’s all it costs him. He 
goes to the gallery an’ he hears gran’, an’ he can go to 
two music-halls in the one night ... in the one night, mind 
you . . . for fourpence! Where would you bate that? 
You never get no diversion of that sort in this place . . . 
only an oul’ magic-lantern an odd time, or the Band of 
Hope singin’ songs about teetotallers ! . . .” 

That was the principal burden of Jamesey ’s complaint, 
that there was no diversion in Ballymartin. “If you were 
to go up the street now,” he said, “you’d, see the fellas 
Stan ’in’ at the corner, houl’in’ up the wall, an’ wonderin’ 
what the hell to do with themselves, an’ never gettin’ no 
answer! ...” 

“You never hear noan of the latest songs here,” he com- 
plained again. “I got a quare cut from my brother once, 
me singin’ a song that I thought was new, an’ he toul’ me 
it was as oul’ as the hills. It was more nor a year oul’, 
anyway! . . 


84 


CHANGING WINDS 


4 

They came away from the hill in a mood of depression. 
It seemed to Henry that the Gaelic Movement could never 
take root in that soil. What was the good of asking Jame- 
sey McKeown to sing Gaelic songs and till the land when 
his heart was hungering for the tuppeny excitements of a 
Glasgow music-hall? What would Jamesey McKeown 
make of Galway ’s translations ? Would 

O woman of the gleaming hair 

(Wild hair that won men’s gaze to thee). 

Weary thou turnest from the common stare, 

For the Shuiler Christ is calling thee. 

bind him to the nurture of the earth when 

What ho! she humps 

called him to Glasgow? 

“We must think of something!’’ Marsh was saying, but 
Henry was busy with his own thoughts and paid no heed 
to him. 

What, after all, had a farm to offer a quick-witted man 
or woman ? That girl, Lizzie McCamley of whom his father 
had spoken once, she had preferred to go to Belfast and 
work in a linen mill and live in a slum rather than continue 
in the country, and Jamesey McKeown, who was so quick 
and eager and anxious to succeed, had weighed farms and 
fields and hills and valleys in the balance and found them 
of less weight and value than a Glasgow bar and a Glasgow 
music-hall. Henry remembered that his father was more 
interested in the land than most men — and he resolved to 
ask for his opinion. What was the good of all this co- 
operation, this struggle to discover the best way of making 
the earth yield up the means of life, this effort to increase 
and multiply, when nothing they could do seemed to make 
the work attractive to those who did it? . . . 


CHANGING WINDS 


85 


Marsh was still murmuring to him. ‘‘I see/’ he was 
saying, “that something must he done. That girl . . . 
what’s her name? . . . Sheila something? ...” 

“Sheila Morgan!” Henry said. 

“Yes. Sheila Morgan . . . she said something about 
dancing classes, didn’t she? We’ll start a dancing class 
. . . we’ll teach them the Gaelic dances! ...” 

It suddenly seemed funny to Henry that Marsh should 
propose to solve the Land Problem . . . the real Laud 
Problem ... by means of dancing classes. 

“They’ll want more than that,” he said. “They can’t 
always be dancing ! ’ ’ 

“No,” Marsh answered, “but we can begin with that!” 

Marsh’s depression swiftly left him. He began to specu- 
late on the future of the countryside when the Gaelic re- 
vival was complete. There would be Gaelic games, Gaelic 
songs, Gaelic dances and a Gaelic literature. “I don’t see 
why we shouldn’t have a theatre in every village, with 
village actors and village plays. . . . There must be a 
great deal of talent hidden away in these houses that never 
comes out because there is no one to bring it out. ... I 
wish you were older, Henry, and were quit of Trinity. 
You and I . . . and Galway ... of course, we must have 
Galway . . . might start the Movement on a swifter course 
than it has now ! . . . ” He broke off and made a gesture 
of impatience. “Oh, my God, why can’t a man do more !” 
he said. 

5 

Henry put the question to his father, and Mr. Quinn 
considered it for a while. 

“I don’t know,” he answered, “what to say. You’d 
think people would find more to interest them in the land 
than in anything else . . . but they don’t. There’s so 
much to do, an’ it’s so varied, an’ you have it all under 
your own eye . . . you begin it an’ carry it on and you 
end it ... an’ yet somehow! . . . An’ then the whole 


86 


CHANGING WINDS 


family understands it and can take an interest in it. 
You’d think that that would hold them. There isn’t any 
other trade in the world that’ll take up a whole family an’ 
give them all somethin’ to talk about an’ think over an’ 
join in. But I’ve never known a bright boy or girl on a 
farm that wasn’t itchin’ to get away from it to a town !” 

“But something’ll have to be done, father!” Henry 
urged. “We must have farmers! ...” 

“Aye, something’ll have to be done, but I’m damned if 
I know what. I suppose when they’ve developed machinery 
more an’ can make transit easier . . . but sometimes I half 
think we’ll have to breed people for the land . . . thick 
people, slow-witted people, clods ... an’ just let them 
root an’ dig and grub an’ . . . an’ breed!” He got up as 
he spoke, and paced about the room. “No, Henry, I’ve 
got no remedy for you! The Almighty God’ll have to 
think of a plan. 1 can ’t ! ” 


6 

Sheila Morgan did not know any of the ancient Gaelic 
dances, nor did any one in Ballymartin. She knew how to 
waltz and she could dance the polka and the schottishe. 
“An’ that’s all you need!” she said. There were two old 
women in the village who danced a double reel, and Paddy 
Kane was a great lad at jigs. . . . 

“Perhaps later on,” Marsh said, “we can get some one 
to teach them Gaelic dances ! ’ ’ 

And so the classes began. Marsh had announced at the 
Language class that the first of the Dancing Classes would 
be held on the following Thursday . . . and on Thursday 
every boy and girl and young man and woman in Bally- 
martin had crowded into the schoolroom where the class 
was to be held. 

“There are more here than come to the Language class,” 
Marsh exclaimed in astonishment when he entered the room. 


CHANGING WINDS 


87 


‘^Dancing seems to be more popular than Gaelic/^ Henry 
replied. 

‘‘I don^t know how we shall teach them all/’ Marsh 
went on. “I can’t dance . . . and she can’t possibly teach 
them all ! ” 

But there was no need to teach them to dance — they had 
all learned to dance “from their cradles,” as some one said, 
and in a little while the room was full of dancing couples. 

Sheila Morgan had gone smilingly to John Marsh as he 
entered the room. “We’re all ready,” she said, and 
waited. 

“Oh, yes!” he replied, a little vaguely. 

She looked at him for a few moments, and then went on. 
“If you were to lead off,” she suggested. 

“ Me ? But I can ’t dance I . . . ” 

“You can’t dance!” 

“No,” he continued. “Somehow, I’ve never learnt to 
dance!” She looked disappointed. “I thought mebbe you 
an’ me ’ud lead off,” she said. 

“I’m sorry,” he replied. “Perhaps Mr. Quinn can 
dance! . . .” 

Henry gave his arm to her and they walked off, to begin 
the slow procession round the room until all the couples 
were ready. • ^ 

“I think Mr. Marsh is the only one in the place that 
can’t dance,” Sheila said, as she placed her hand on 
Henry’s shoulder. 

He put his arm round her waist and they moved off in 
the dance. “I suppose he is,” he answered. 

7 

He danced with her several times. Her cheeks were 
glowing and the lustre of her eyes was like the sparkle of 
the stars. Her lips were slightly parted, £(nd now and then 
her breath came quickly. As they swung round and round, 
she sometimes cl^>sed her eyes and then slowly opened them 


88 


CHANGING WINDS 


again. He became aware of some strange emotion that he 
had never known before. 

“I love dancin’/’ she murmured, half to herself. 

“Yes,” he replied, scarcely knowing that he was 
speaking. 

“I love dancin’,” she said again, and again he said 
“Yes” and no more. . . . 

He led her to a seat at the side of the room and sat down 
on the chair next to it. They did not speak, but sat there 
watching the swift movements of the other dancers. Marsh 
was somewhere at the other end of the room, looking on 
... a little puzzled, a little disturbed . . . but pleased, 
too, because the dancers were pleased. He was wondering 
why the interest in the Gaelic language was not so strong 
as the interest in the waltz. “A foreign dance, too . . . 
not Gaelic at all!” 

But Henry had forgotten the Gaelic movement, and was 
conscious only of the girl beside him and her glowing 
cheeks and her bright eyes and the softness of her. . . . 
She was older than he was, a couple of years and he noticed 
that she had just “put up” her hair. It had been hanging 
loosely when he first saw her, and he wondered which he 
liked better, the loose, hanging hair, or the hair bound 
round her head. Her slender white neck was revealed now 
that her hair was up, and it was very beautiful, but he 
thought that after all, his first sight of her, as she stood in 
the doorway, the raindrops still on her face, and flung 
back the long, loose strands of dark hair that lay about 
her shoulders ... he still thought that was the loveliest 
vision of her he had seen. . . . 

Then he remembered Mary Graham. She, too, had long 
loose hair that lay in dark lengths about her shoulders, and 
her eyes, too, could shine . . . but she was a girl, and 
Sheila was a woman! ... He was engaged to Mary, of 
course . . . well, was it an engagement? They had been 
sweethearts and he had told her he loved her and she had 
said that she would marry him . . . and ill that . . . but 


CHANGING WINDS 


89 


they were kids when that happened. Ninian had called 
him a sloppy ass! . . . This was different. His feeling 
for Sheila Morgan was different from his feeling for Mary 
Graham. He had never felt for any one as he felt for 
Sheila. He seemed unaccountably to be more aware of 
Sheila than he was of Mary. He could not altogether un- 
derstand this difference of sensation . . . but sometimes 
when he had been with Mary, he had forgotten that she 
was a girl . . . she was just some one with whom he was 
playing a game or going for a walk or taking a bathe in 
the sea. But he could not forget that Sheila was a woman. 
When he had danced with her and his arm was about her 
waist and her fingers were in his . . . he seemed to grow 
up. He felt as if something at which he had been gazing 
uncomprehendingly for a long time, had suddenly become 
known to him. He recognised something . . . understood 
something which had puzzled him. 

‘^Let^s dance again, he said, standing up before her. 

“All right, she answered, rising and going to him. 

“I love dancing,’’ he said to her. 

“Yes,” she murmured in reply. 

8 

When the dance was over, he took her to her uncle’s 
farm. Marsh, overcome by headache, had gone home be- 
fore the dance was ended, and Henry felt glad of this. He 
waited in the porch of the schoolhouse while Sheila put on 
her coat and wrap, and wondered why his feeling for her 
was so different from his feeling for Mary Graham, and 
while he wondered, she came to him, gathering up her 
skirts. 

“Isn’t the sky lovely?” she said, glancing up at the 
stars, as they walked out of the school-yard into the road. 

He glanced up too, but did not answer. 

‘ ‘ Millions an ’ millions of them, ’ ’ she said. “You ’d won- 
der the sky ’ud hold them all! ” 


90 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Yes/’ lie said. 

“Many’s a time I wonder about the stars,” she went on. 
“Do you ever wonder about them?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“Do you think there’s people in them, the same as there 
is on the earth?” 

“I don’t know,” he answered. 

“This is a star, too, isn’t it?” she asked. 

“Yes.” 

“An’ shines just like them does?” 

“Yes, I think so!” 

“That’s quare!” She walked on for a few yards with- 
out speaking, and her eyes were fixed steadily on the starry 
fields. “It’s funny,” she said, “to think mebbe there’s 
people up there lookin’ at us an’ them mebbe thinkin’ 
about this place what we’re thinkin’ of them. Wouldn’t 
you love to be able to fiy up to one of them an’ just see if 
it’s true? . . .” 

He laughed at her and she laughed in response. “I’m 
talkin’ blether,” she said, stumbling over a stone in the 
road. 

“Mind!” he warned her, putting out his hand to steady 
her. 

“I was nearly down that time,” she said. “These roads 
is awful in the dark . . . you can’t see where you’re goin’ 
or what’s in the way!” 

“No,” he replied. 

Her arms were crooked because she was holding her 
skirts about her ankles, and as she stumbled against him a 
second time, he put out his hand and caught hold of her 
arm, and this time he did not withdraw it. He slipped his 
arm inside hers and drew her close to him, and so they 
walked on in the starlight up the rough road that led to 
Matthew Hamilton’s farm. 

“It’s quaren late,” she said, moving nearer to him. 

“Yes,” he answered. 

There was a rustle in the trees as the night wind blew 


CHANGING WINDS 


91 


through the branches, and they could hear the silken mur- 
mur of the corn as it bent before the breeze. Now and 
then there was a flutter of wings in a hedge as they passed 
by, and the low murmurs of cattle and sheep came from 
the fields. 

wish it were next Thursday, he said. 

“So do I,’’ she replied. 

“I wish we could have two dancing-classes in the week 
instead of one ! ^ ’ 

“So do I,’’ she said. 

“But we can’t manage that,” he continued. “You see 
we have two nights for the Language class ! . . . ” 

“You could have one night for the Language class,” 
she said, “and two nights for dancing!” 

“I don’t think Marsh would like that,” he answered. 

They walked on for a while, thinking of what Marsh 
would say, and then she broke the silence. 

“I don’t see the good of them oul’ language classes,” she 
said. 

“Don’t you?’^ 

“No. I’d rather be dancin’ any day! ...” 

9 

He left her at the gate that led into the farm-yard. 

“Good-night,” he said, holding out his hand to her. 

“Good-night!” she replied. 

But still he did not move away nor did she open the gate 
and pass into the yard. 

“I shall look forward to Thursday,” he said. 

“So shall I!” 

“Good-night ! ” 

“Good-night!” 

He still held her hand in his and as she made a move- 
ment to draw it away, he suddenly pulled her to him and 
put his arms about her and kissed her. 

“Sheila!” he said. 


92 


CHANGING WINDS 


^^Let me go!^’ she whispered. 

She drew away from him, and stood looking at him for 
a few moments. Then she pushed the gate open and 
walked into the yard. 

‘‘Good-night!’^ she said. 


THE SEVENTH CHAPTER 


1 

His habit had been to work in the morning with Marsh, 
and then, after light luncheon, they walked through the 
country during the afternoon, climbing hills or tramping 
heavily through the fields or, going off on bicycles, to bathe 
at Cushendall. Sometimes, Mr. Quinn accompanied them 
on these expeditions, and then they had fierce arguments 
about Ireland, but more often Marsh and Henry went off 
together, leaving Mr. Quinn behind to ponder over some 
problem of agriculture or to wrangle with William Henry 
Matier on what was and what was not a fair day’s work. 
But now, Henry began to scheme to be alone. On the 
day after he had taken Sheila Morgan to her uncle’s farm, 
he had been so restless and inattentive during his morn- 
ing’s work that Marsh had asked him if he were ill. 

‘H’m rather headachy,” he had answered, and had 
gladly accepted the offer to quit work for the day. 

“Would you like to go out for a walk?” Marsh had 
asked. “The fresh air! . . 

And Henry had replied, “No, thanks! I think I’ll just 
go up to my room ! ’ ’ 

He had gone to his room and then, listening until he had 
heard Marsh go out, he had descended the stairs and, almost 
on tiptoe, had gone out of the house by a side-door, and, 
slipping through the paddock as if he were anxious not to 
be seen, had run swiftly through the meadows and corn- 
fields until he reached the road that led to Hamilton’s 
farm. He had not decided what he was going to do when 
he had reached the farm. Sheila would probably be busy 
about the house or she might have work to do in the farm* 

93 


94 


CHANGING WINDS 


yard. Now that her uncle was ill, some of his labour would 
have to be done by others. But he would be less in the 
way, he thought, in the morning than he would be in the 
evening when the cows were being milked . . . though he 
might offer to help her to strain the milk and churn it, if 
she did that, and he could scald the milk-pans and . . . 
do lots of things ! The evening, however, was still a 
long way off, but the morning was . . . now I And he 
wished very much to be with Sheila . . . now . . . this 
moment ! 

He saw her before she saw him. She had her back to 
him, and she was bending over her uncle who was sitting 
at the door of the farmhouse, with a rug wrapped round 
his legs. Henry, suddenly shy, stood still in the “loanie,’^ 
looking at her and trying to think of something to say to 
her which would make his appearance there at that hour 
natural ; but before he had thought of something that was 
suitable, she turned and saw him, and so he went forward, 
tongue-tied and awkward. 

“Here’s Mr. Quinn!” she said to her uncle . . . she 
had never known him as Master Henry, and she had not 
yet learned to call him by his Christian name alone. 

The farmer looked up. “You mane Mr. Henry,” he 
said, and Henry, listening to him, felt that at last h® was 
near manhood, for people were shedding the “Master.” 

“Good-morning, Hamilton!” he said, holding out his 
hand to the farmer. “How ’re you to-day?” 

“Middlin’, sir . . . only middlin’. This is the first I’ve 
been out of the house this long while, but the day’s that 
warm, I just thought I ’d like to get a heat of the sun, bad 
or no bad. It’s a terrible thing to be helpless like this 
. . . not able to do a han’s-turn for yourself! ...” 

“Ah, quit, Uncle Matt!” Sheila interjected. “Sure, 
you’ll soon be all right an’ runnin’ about like a two-year 
oul’!” She turned to Henry. “He’s an awful man for 
wantin’ to be doin’ things, an’ it’s sore work tryin’ to get 
him to sit still the way the doctor says he ’s to sit. Always 


CHANGING WINDS 


95 


wantin’ to be up an’ doin’ somethin’! Aren’t you, Uncle 
Matt?” 

‘^Ay, daughter, I am. I was always the lad for 
work! ...” 

“You’re a terrible oul’ provoker, so you are. You’re 
just jealous, that’s it, an’ you’re heart-feard we’ll mebbe 
all learn how to look after the farm better nor you can!” 

The old man smiled and took hold of her hand and 
fondled it. “You’re the right wee girl,” he said affection- 
ately. “Always doin’ your best to keep a man’s heart 
up !” 

“Indeed, then,” she said briskly, “you gimme enough 
to do to keep your heart up. You’re worse nor a cradleful 
of childher ! . . . Here, let me wrap this shawl about your 
shoulders! Aren’t you the oul’ footer to be lettin’ it slip 
down like that? . . . There now!” 

He lay back in his chair while she folded the shawl 
about him, and smiled at her. “God content you, daugh- 
ter!” he murmured. 


2 

“Well?” she said to Henry as they moved towards the 
byre. 

He had sat with the farmer for a while, talking of the 
weather and the crops and the prospects of the harvest, 
and then, seeing Sheila going across the yard, he had 
followed her. 

“Well?” she said, looking at him quizzically. 

He did not know what to say, so he stood there smiling 
at her. Her arms were bare to the bend, and the neck of 
her blouse was open so that he saw her firm, brown throat. 

“Well!” he replied, still smiling, and “Well?” she said 
again. 

She went into the byre, and he followed her to the door, 
and stood peering into the dark interior where a sick cow 
lay lowing softly. 


96 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘Is that all you have to say for yourself?’’ Sheila called 
to him. 

“I have a whole lot to say,” he replied, “but I don’t 
know how to say it ! ” 

She laughed at that, and he liked the strong, quick sound 
of her laughter. “You’re the quare wee fella,” she 
exclaimed. 

Wee fellow! He flushed and straightened himself. 

“I was passing along the road,” he said stiffly, “and I 
thought I ’d come up and see your uncle ! . . . ” 

“Oh!” she answered. 

“Yes. My father was wondering yesterday how he was 
getting on, so I just thought I ’d come over and see him. I 
suppose you’re busy?” 

“You suppose right ! ’ ’ 

He moved a step or two away from the door of the byre. 
“Then I won’t hinder you in your work,” he said. 

“You’re not hinderin’ me,” she replied, coming out of 
the dark byre as she spoke. ‘ ‘ It would take the quare man 
to hinder me! Where’s Mr. Marsh this mornin’?” 

‘ ‘ Oh, somewhere 1 ’ ’ 

“I thought you an’ him was always thegether. You’re 
always about anyway 1 ’ ’ 

He felt strangely boyish while she was talking. Last 
night, when he had drawn her to him and had kissed her 
soft, moist lips, he had felt suddenly adult. While his 
arms were about her, he was conscious of manhood, of 
something new in his life, something that he had been grow- 
ing to, but until that moment had not yet reached . . . 
and now, standing in the strong sunlight and looking into 
her firm, laughing eyes, his manhood seemed to have re- 
ceded from him, and once more he was ... a wee fellow, 
a schoolboy, a bit of a lad. . . . His vexation must have 
been apparent in his expression, for she said “What ails 
you?” to him. 

“Nothing,” he replied, turning away. 

It was she who was making him feel schoolboyish again. 


CHANGING WINDS 


97 


She looked so capable and so assured, standing outside the 
byre-door, with a small crock in her hands, that he felt 
that she was many years older than he was, that she knew 
far more than he could hope to know for a long time. . . . 

She put the crock down and came close to him and took 
hold of his arm. ‘‘What ails youT^ she said again, peer- 
ing up into his face and smiling at him. 

He looked at her with sulky eyes. “You’re making fun 
of me,” he said. 

She shook his arm and pushed him. “G’long with 
you!” she said. “A big lump of a fella like you, actin’ 
the chile! ...” She picked up the crock and handed it 
to him. “Here,” she said, “carry that into the house, 
will you, an’ ask me aunt Kate to give you the full of it 
with yella male, an’ then hurry back. I’ll be up in the 
hayloft,” she added, moving off. 

3 

He laid the crock of yellow meal down on a wooden box 
in the barn, and then climbed up the ladder to the hayloft. 

“Wheesht,” she said, holding up her hand. “There’s 
a hen sittin’ here, an’ I don’t want her disturbed!” He 
climbed into the loft as quietly as he could. “They’ll soon 
be out now,” she went on, “the lovely wee things! . . . 
What did you come here for, the day?” 

‘ ‘ To see you ! ” he answered. 

“Then that was a lie about cornin’ to see my Uncle 
Matt?” 

He nodded his head. 

‘ ‘ I thought as much. Sit down here by the side of me ! ” 

He sat down on the hay where she bade him. ‘ ‘ Are you 
angry with me?” he asked, making a wisp of hay. 

“What would I be angry for?” 

He did not know. Last night, perhaps, when he had 
kissed her ? 

‘ ‘ Oh, that ! ” she said. ‘ ‘ Sure, that ’s nothin ’ ! ” 


98 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Nothing?^’ 

Why, then, had she left him so suddenly? She must 
have known how much he had to say to her. . . . 

“Look at the time it was!’^ she exclaimed. “An’ me 
havin’ to get up at five an’ let the cows out. . . . You 
weren’t up at no five. I’ll bet!” He had risen at eight. 
“Eight!” she exclaimed. “That’s no hour of the day to 
be risin’. If you were married to me, I’d make you skip 
long before that hour ! ’ ’ 

Married to her! . . . 

“Sheila,” he whispered, taking hold of her arm. 

“Well?” she said, thrusting a hay-stalk into his hair. 

‘ ‘ I love you, Sheila ! ” he whispered, coming closer to her. 

“Do you, indeed?” she answered. 

“I do, Sheila, I do. . . .” 

He raised himself so that he was kneeling in front of 
her. His shyness had left him now, and the words were 
pouring rapidly out of his mouth. 

“The minute I saw you in the door of the schoolroom 
that night, I was in love with you. I was, indeed ! ’ ’ 

“Were you?” 

“Yes. I couldn’t help it, Sheila, and the worst of it was 
I didn’t know what to say to you. And then, last night 
. . . when we were walking up the ‘loanie’ together 
and I was holding your arm . . . you know! . . . like 
this. ...” He took hold of her arm as he spoke and 
pressed it in his. ... “I felt like . . . like. ...” 

“Like what?” 

“I don’t know. Like anything. You will marry me, 
Sheila? You do love me? . . .” 

She withdrew her arm from his and struck him lightly 
with a wisp of hay. “You’re in a terrible hurry all of a 
sudden!” she said. “One minute you hardly know me, 
an’ the next minute you’re gettin’ ready to be married to 
me. You’re a despert wee fella!” 

Wee fellow again! 


CHANGING WINDS 


99 


“I^m not so very young/ ^ he said. 

“What age are you?’^ she asked. 

“I^m nearly seventeen/’ he replied. 

She jumped up and stood over him. “God save us/’ she 
said, “that’s the powerful age. You’d nearly bate 
Methusaleh !” 

He stood up beside her. “Now, you’re laughing at me 
again, ’ ’ he complained. 

“No, I’m not,” she answered. 

She laid her hand on his shoulder and gripped it firmly, 
and stood thus, looking at him intently. Then she drew 
him into her arms and kissed him. “I like you quaren 
well,” she said, holding him to her. 

“Do you, Sheila?” 

“Aye, of course I do, or I wouldn’t be huggin’ you like 
this, would I ? Did you bring the yella male ? ’ ’ 

He nodded his head. “It’s down below,” he said. 

“Dear, oh, dear,” she sighed. “I’ve wasted a terrible 
lot of time on you, Mr. Quinn! ...” 

‘ ‘ Call me ‘ Henry, ’ ” he said. 

“I’ll call you ‘Harry,’ ” she answered. 

“You can call me anything you like! ...” 

She pinched his cheek. “You’re a dear wee fella,” she 
said. He did not mind being called a “wee fella” now. 
“But you’re keepin’ me from my work,” she went on. 

He seized her hand impetuously. “Take a day off,” he 
said, ‘ ‘ and we ’ll go for a long walk together ! ’ ’ 

She laughed at him. “You quality people is the great 
ones for talk,” she replied. “An’ how could I take a day 
off an’ me with my work to do?” 

“Well, this evening then,” he urged. 

“There’ll be the cows to milk! ...” 

“I’ll come and help you.” 

“But sure you can’t milk!” 

“No, I can’t milk, of course, but I can do anything else 
you want done. I can hold things and . . . and run mes- 


100 


CHANGING WINDS 


sages . . . and just help you. Can^t I? And then, when 
youVe finished your work, well go and sit in the clover 
field. . . 

“An^ get our death of cold sittin’ on the damp ground. 
Dear 0, but men talks quare blether ! ’ ’ 

He tried to persuade her that dew was not damping. 
. . . “Ah, quit!’’ she exclaimed . . . and then he begged 
for her company in a walk along the Ballymena Koad. 

“I suppose I’ll have to give in to you,” she said. 
“You’re a terrible fella for coaxin’!” 

She moved towards the trap where the head of the ladder 
showed, and prepared to descend from the loft. 

“What time will I come for you?” he asked, following 
her. 

“Half-seven,” she answered, going down the ladder. 
“ I ’ll be well done my work then ! ’ ’ 

He stood above her, looking down through the trap. 
“We generally have dinner at half-past seven,” he said. 

“You should have your dinner in the middle of the day, 
like us,” she answered, and added, decisively, “It’s half- 
seven or never!” 

“All right,” he exclaimed, stooping down carefully and 
putting his feet on a rung of the ladder. “I’ll come for 
you then. I’ll manage it somehow.” 

4 

He told his father that he did not want any dinner. 
John Marsh had enquired about his headache, and Henry 
had said that it was better, but that he thought he would 
like to be quiet that evening. He said, too, that he had 
made up his mind to go for a long, lonely walk. “But 
what about your dinner ? ’ ’ Mr. Quinn had said, and he had 
answered that he did not want any. “If I’m hungry,” he 
added, “I can have something before I go to bed.” 

He felt vaguely irritated with John Marsh who first pes- 
tered him . . . that was the wprd Henry used in his mind 


CHANGING WINDS 


101 


. . . with sympathy and then lamented that his headache 
would prevent him from helping that evening at the Gaelic 
language class. “Still, I suppose we’ll manage,” he ended 
regretfully. 

“I don’t suppose there’ll be many at the class,” Henry 
replied almost sneeringly. 

“Why?” said Marsh. 

“Oh, well,” Henry went on, “after last night! ...” 

“You mean that they think more of dancing than they 
do of the language?” Marsh interrupted, and there was so 
much of anxiety in the tone of his voice that Henry re- 
gretted that he had sneered at him. 

“Well, that’s natural,” he said, trying to think of some 
phrase that would mitigate the unkindness of what he was 
saying, and failing to think of it. “After all, it is much 
more fun to dance than to learn grammar. ...” 

“But this is the Irish language,” Marsh persisted, as if 
the Irishness of the tongue transcended the drudgery of 
learning grammar. 

Mr. Quinn crumpled the Northern Whig and threw it at 
Marsh’s head. “You an’ your oul’ language!” he ex- 
claimed. “What good’ll it do anybody but a lot of pro- 
fessors. Here’s the world tryin’ to get Latin an’ Greek 
out of the universities, an’ here’s you tryin’ to get an- 
other dead language into them ! ’ ’ 

There followed an argument that developed into a wran- 
gle, in the midst of which Henry, flinging a consolatory 
speech to Marsh, escaped from the house. “You’ll get all 
the keen ones to-night,” he said. “That’ll be some con- 
solation to you!” 

It was too soon to go up to Hamilton’s farm. The dairy 
work would hardly be done, and there would be the even- 
ing meal to prepare, and he knew that he would not be wel- 
come in the middle of that activity. He did not wish to 
return to the room where his father and John Marsh were 
arguing about the Irish language, nor did he wish to go 
and sit in his own room until the time came to go and 


102 


CHANGING WINDS 


meet Sheila. If Hannah were to make some sandwiches 
for him, in case he should feel hungry, he would go to the 
bottom fields and lie in the long grass by the brook until 
it was time to meet Sheila. He went downstairs to the 
kitchen and found Hannah busy with the night’s dinner. 

“Well, Master Henry?” she said. 

He told her of his headache and his desire for a solitary 
walk, and asked her to cut sandwiches for him. 

“I will with a heart an’ a half,” she said, “when I’ve 
strained these potatoes. Sit down there a while an’ con- 
tent yourself till I’ve done. ...” 

He took the sandwiches from her and went off to the 
bottom fields. The sky was full of mingled colours and 
long torn clouds that looked like fiights of angels, and 
hidden in the fold of one great white strip of cloud that 
stretched up into the heavens, the sickle moon shone faintly, 
waiting for the setting sun to disappear so that she should 
shine out with unchallenged refulgence. He stood a while 
to look at the glory of the sky, and munched his sand- 
wiches while he looked. He had always had a sensuous 
love of fine shapes and looks; the big bare branches of an 
old tree showing darkly against a winter sky or the chang- 
ing colour of clouds at sunset, transfused at one moment 
to the look of filmy gold as the sun sent his rays shining 
upwards, darkened at the next, when the sun had vanished, 
so that they had the colour of smoke and made a stain as 
if God had drawn a sooty thumb across the sky; but now 
his sensuousness had developed, and he found himself full 
of admiration for things which hitherto he had not ob- 
served. That evening, when the cart-horses were led home, 
he had suddenly perceived that their great limbs were 
beautiful. He had stood still in the lane to watch them 
going by, and had liked the heavy plunging sound of their 
hoofs on the rough road, and the faded look of the long 
hair that hung about their houghs; but more than these 
he had liked the great round limbs of them, so full of 
strength. He remembered that once at Boveyhayne, Mary 


CHANGING WINDS 


103 


Graham and he had argued about the sea-gulls. She had 
“just loved ’’ them, but he had qualified his admiration. 
He liked the long, motionless flight of the gulls as they 
circled through the air, and the whiteness of their shapely 
bodies and the grey feathers on their backs, but he dis- 
liked the small heads they had and the long yellow beaks 
and the little black eyes and the harsh cry . . . and he had 
almost sickened when he saw them feeding on the entrails 
that were thrown to them by the flshermen. . . . But now, 
since he had fallen in love with Sheila Morgan, it seemed 
to him that everything in the world was beautiful; and 
lying here in the long grass, he yielded himself to the love- 
liness of the earth. He lay back and closed his eyes and 
listened to the sounds that filled the air, the noise of 
pleased, tired things at peace and the subdued songs of 
roosting birds. He could hear shouts from the labourers 
in the distant hayfields and, now and then, the slow rattle 
of a country cart as it moved clumsily along the uneven 
roads that led from the fields to the farmyards. There was 
a drowsy buzz of insects that mingled oddly with the bur- 
ble of the stream and the lowing of the cattle. . . . He lay 
there and listened to a lark as it flew up from the ground 
with a queer, agitated flutter of wings, watching it as 
it ascended high and higher until it became a tiny speck, 
and then he sat up and watched it as it descended again, 
still flying with that queer, agitated flutter of wings, until 
it came near the earth, when its song suddenly ceased and 
it changed its flight and fell swiftly to its nest. 

He rose up from the grass and walked over to the stream 
and dipped his hands into it, splashing the water on to the 
grass beside him. The sunlight shone on his hand and 
made the wet hairs shine like golden threads. . . . 


5 

He was kneeling there at the side of the stream, looking 
at the wet glow of his hand when the fear of death came 


104 


CHANGING WINDS 


to him, and instantly he was terrified when he thought that 
he might die. The consciousness of life was in him and 
the desire to continue and to experience and to know were 
quickening and increasing. It seemed to him then that if 
he were to die at that moment, he would have been cheated 
of his inheritance, that he would have a grievance against 
God for all eternity. ... He moved away from the brook 
and sank back into the grass, shaken and disconcerted. 
Until that moment, he had never thought of death except 
as a vague, inevitable thing that came to all creatures 
some time . . . generally when they were old and had lost 
the savour of life. He had never seen a dead man or 
woman and he was unfamiliar with the rites of burial. He 
knew, indeed, that people die before they grow old, that 
children die, but until that moment, death had not become 
a personal thing, a thing that might descend on him. . . . 

He shut his eyes and tried to close the thought of death 
out of his mind, but it would not go away. He began to 
sing disconnected staves of songs in the hope that he would 
forget that he was mortal. . . . There was a song that 
Bridget Fallon had taught him when he was a child, and 
now after many years, he was singing it again : 

There were three lords came out of Spain, 

They came to court my daughter Jane. 

My daughter Jane, she is too young, 

And cannot bear your flatt’ring tongue. 

So fare you well, make no delay. 

But come again another day. . . . 

But the thought of death still lay heavy on his mind, 
and so he got up and left the field and hurried along the 
road that led to Hamilton's farm. 

“Oh, my God,^’ he cried to himself, “if I were to die 
now, just when I ’m beginning to know things ! . . . ” 

He began to run, as if he would run away from his own 
thoughts. The torn strips of clouds, that had looked like 


CHANGING WINDS 


105 


molten gold, were now darkening, and their darkness 
seemed ominous to him. The steepness of the ^‘loanie” 
made him pant and presently he slackened his pace and 
slowed down to walking. His eyes felt hot and stiff in their 
sockets and when he put his hand on his forehead, he felt 
that it was wet with sweat. 

“I’m frightened,” he said to himself. “Scared! . . .” 

He wiped his forehead and then crumpled his hand- 
kerchief in his hot palms. 

“I’m rattled,” he went on to himself. “That’s what I 
am. Oh, my God, I am scared! ...” 

He looked about him helplessly. He could see a man 
tossing hay in a field near by, and he watched the rhythmi- 
cal movement of his fork as it rose and fell. 

“I couldn’t die now,” he thought. “I couldnH, It 
wouldn’t be fair. I wouldn’t let myself die ... I 
wouldn ’t ! ” 

And as suddenly as the fear of death had fallen on him, 
it left him. 

“Good Lord!” he said aloud, “what an ass I am !” 

6 

Sheila was sitting on a stool in front of the door. Her 
uncle had gone to bed, and her aunt, tired after her day’s 
work and her attendance on the sick man, was lying on the 
sofa, dosing. 

“I wondered were you cornin’,” Sheila said as he came 
up to her. 

“You knew I’d come,” he answered. 

“I didn’t know anything of the sort,” she exclaimed, 
getting up from the stool. “Fellas has disappointed me 
before this. ’ ’ 

“Have you had other sweethearts?” he asked, frowning. 

She laughed at him. “I’ve had boys since I was that 
high,” she replied, holding out her hand to indicate her 


106 


CHANGING WINDS 


height when she first had a sweetheart. “What are you 
lookin^ so sore about? D’ye think no one never looked at 
me ’til you came along ? For dear sake ! ’ ’ 

She rallied him. Was she the first girl he had ever 
loved? Was she? Ah, he was afraid to answer. As if 
she did not know! Of course, she was not the first, and 
dear knows she might not be the last . . . 

“I’ll never love any one but you, Sheila! ...” 

“Wheesht will you, or my aunt’ll hear you!” 

^ ‘ I don ’t care who hears me ! . . . ” 

“Well, I do then. Come on down the loanie a piece, 
an’ you can say what you like. I love the way you talk 
. . . you’ve got the quare nice English accent!” 

He followed her across the farmyard and through the 
gate into the “loanie.” 

“My father wouldn’t like to hear you saying that,” he 
said. 

“Why?” she asked. “Does he not like the English way 
of talkin’?” 

“Indeed, he does not. He loves the way you talk, the 
way all the Ulster people talk ! . . . ” 

“What! Broad an’ coarse like me?” she interrupted. 

Henry nodded his head. “He doesn’t think it’s coarse,” 
he said. “He thinks it’s fine !” 

Sheila pondered on this for a few moments. “He must 
be a quare man, your da ! ” she said. 

They walked to the foot of the “loanie” and then turned 
along the Ballymena road. 

‘ ‘ Does he know you come out with me ? ” she said. 

“Who?” he answered. 

“Your da.” 

“No. You see! ...” He did not know what to say. 
It had not occurred to him to talk about Sheila to his 
father, and he realised now that if it had, he probably 
would not have done so. 

“But if you’re goin’ to marry me? . . .” Sheila was 
saying. 


CHANGING WINDS 


107 


“Oh, of course,^’ he replied. “Of course, I shall have 
to tell him about you, won’t I? I just didn’t think of it. 
. . . Then you’re going to marry me, Sheila?” he de- 
manded, turning to her quickly. 

“Och, I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m too young 
to be married yet, an’ you’re younger nor me, an’ mebbe 
we’d change our minds, an’ anyway there’s a quare differs 
atween us.” 

“What difference is there between us?” he said, indig- 
nantly. 

“Aw, there’s a quare deal of differs,” she maintained. 
“A quare deal. You’re a quality-man! ...” 

“As if that matters,” he interrupted. 

“It matters a quare lot,” she said. ^ 

They sat down on a bank by the roadside and he took 
hold of her hand and pressed it, and then he put his arm 
about her and drew her head down on to his shoulder. 

“Somebody’ll see you,” she whispered. 

“There’s no one in sight,” he replied. 

“Do you love me an awful lot?” she asked, looking up 
at him. 

“You know I do.” 

“More nor anybody in the world?” 

He bent over and kissed her. “More than anybody in 
the world,” he answered. 

“You’re not just lettin’ on?” she continued. 

“Letting on!” 

“Aye. Makin’ out you love me, an’ you on’y passin’ the 
time, divertin’ yourself?” 

He was angry with her. How could she imagine that he 
would pretend to love her? . . . 

“I do love you,” he insisted, “and I’ll always love you. 
I feel that . . . that ! . . .” 

He fumbled for words to express his love for her, but 
could not find any. 

“Ah, well,” she said, “it doesn’t matter whether you’re 
pretendin’ or not. I’m quaren happy anyway!” 


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CHANGING WINDS 


She struggled out of his embrace and put her arms round 
his neck and kissed him. She remained thus with her arms 
round him and her face close to his, gazing into his eyes 
as if she were searching for something. . . . 

‘‘What are you thinkin^, Sheila?” he asked. 

“Nothin’,” she said, and she drew him to her and kissed 
him again. 

“I wish I was older,” he exclaimed presently. 

“Why?” 

“Because I could marry you, then, and we’d go away 
and see all the places in the world. ...” 

“I’d rather go to Portrush for my honeymoon,” she 
said. ‘ ‘ I went there for a trip once ! ’ ’ 

“We’d go to Portrush too. We’d go to all the places. 
I’d take you to England and Scotland and Wales, and then 
we’d go to France and Spain and Italy and Africa and 
India and all the places.” 

“I’d be quaren tired goin’ to all them places,” she 
murmured. 

“And then when we’d seen everything, we’d come back 
to Ireland and start a farm. . , .” 

She sat up and smiled at him. “An’ keep cows an’ 
horses,” she said. 

“Yes, and pigs and sheep and hens and ... all the 
things they have. Ducks and things ! ’ ’ 

“I’d love that,” she said, delighted. 

“We’d go up to Belfast every now and then, and look at 
the shops and buy things! ...” 

“An’ go to the theatre an’ have our tea at an eatin’- 
house ? ’ ’ 

“We’d go to an hotel for our tea,” he said. 

“Oh, no, I’d be near afeard of them places. I wasn’t 
reared up to that sort of place, an’ I wouldn’t know what 
to do, an’ all the people lookin’ at me, an’ the waiters 
watchin’ every bite you put in your mouth, ’til you’d near 
think they’d grudged you your food!” 

They made plans over which they laughed, and they 


CHANGING WINDS 


109 


mocked each other, teasing and pretending to anger, and 
he pulled her hair and kissed her, and she slapped his 
cheeks and kissed him. 

“I’d give the world,” she said, “to have my photo- 
graph took in a low-neck dress. Ahernethy does them 
grand ! . . . ” She stopped suddenly and turned her head 
slightly from him in a listening attitude. 

“What’s up?” he asked. 

“Wheesht!” she replied, and then added, “D’ye hear 
anything ? ’ ’ 

He listened for a moment or two, and then said, “Yes, 
it sounds like a horse gallopin’. ...” They listened 
again, and then she proceeded. “You’d near think it was 
runnin’ away,” she said. 

The sound of hooves rapidly beating the ground and the 
noise of quickly-revolving wheels came nearer. 

“It is runnin’ away,” she said, getting up from the bank 
and moving into the middle of the road where she stood 
looking in the direction from which the sound came*. 

‘ ‘ Don ’t stand in the road, ’ ’ Henry shouted to her. “You 
might get hurt.” 

She did not move nor did she appear to hear what he 
was saying. He had a strange sensation of shrinking, a 
desire not to be there, but he subdued it and went to join 
her in the middle of the road. 

“Here it is,” she said, turning to him and pointing to 
where the road made a sudden swerve. 

He looked and saw a galloping horse, head down, com- 
ing rapidly towards them. There was a light cart behind 
it, bumping and swaying so that it seemed likely to be over- 
turned, but there was no driver. It was still some way 
off, and he had time to think that he ought to stop the 
frightened animal. If it were allowed to go on, it might 
kill some one in the village. There would be children 
playing about in the street. . . . 

“I’ll stop it,” he said to himself, and half-consciously 
he buttoned his coat. 


110 


CHANGING WINDS 


He tried to remember just what he ought to do. "Will- 
iam Henry Matier had told him not to stand right in front 
of a runaway horse, but to move to the side so that he 
could run with it. He would do that, and then he would 
spring at its head and haul the reins so tightly that the 
bit would slip back into the horse’s mouth. . . . He moved 
from the middle of the road, and was conscious that Sheila 
had moved, too. His breath was coming quickly, and he 
felt again that sense of shrinking, that curious desire to 
run away. He saw a wheel of the cart lurch up as it passed 
over a stone in the road, and instantly panic seized him. 
‘‘My God,” he thought, “if that had been me! ... He 
saw himself flung to the ground by the maddened horse 
and the wheel passing over his body, crunching his flesh 
and bones. He had the sensation of blood gushing from 
his mouth, and for a moment or two he felt as if he had 
actually suffered the physical shock of being broken be- 
neath the cart wheel. . . . 

“I can’t!” he muttered, and then he turned and ran 
swiftly to the side of the road and climbed on to the bank, 
struggling to break through the thorn hedge at the top of 
it. His hands were torn and bleeding and once he slipped 
and fell forward and his face was scratched by the 
thorns. . . . 


7 

He had thrown himself over the hedge and had lain 
there, with his eyes closed, trembling. He was crying now, 
not with fright, but with remorse. He had failed in cour- 
age, and perhaps the horse had dashed into the village and 
killed a child. ... He wondered what Sheila would say, 
and then he started up, his eyes wide with horror, think- 
ing that perhaps Sheila had been killed. He climbed up 
the bank, and jumped over the low hedge into the road- 
way. There were some men approaching him, coming 


CHANGING WINDS 


111 


from the direction in which the horse had come, but he did 
not pay any heed to them. He began to run towards the 
village. A little distance from the place where he and 
Sheila had stood to watch the oncoming animal, the road 
made another bend, and when he had reached this bend, he 
met Sheila. 

‘^You needn’t hurry now/^ she said. 

He did not hear the emphasis she laid on the word 
‘‘now.” “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously. 

She did not answer, but strode on past him. 

“Are you all right?” he repeated, following after her. 

“It’s a bit late to ask that,” she said, turning and fac- 
ing him. “I might ’a’ been killed for all you cared, so 
long as you were safe yourself!” 

He shrank back from her, unable to answer, and the men 
came up, before she could say anything else to him. 

“Did ye see the horse runnin’ away?” one of them said 
to her. 

“You’ll find it down the road a piece,” she replied. 
“It’s leg’s broke. It turn ’led an’ fell. Yous’ll have to 
shoot it, I s’pose!” 

They supposed they would. The driver had been drink- 
ing and in his drunkenness he had thrashed the poor beast. 
. . . “But he’ll never thrash another horse, the same lad,” 
said the man who told them of the circumstances. “He 
was pitched out on his head, an’ he wasn’t worth picking 
up when they lifted him. Killed dead, an’ him as drunk 
as a fiddler! Begod, I wouldn’t like to die that way! It 
’ud be a quare thing to go afore your Maker an’ you 
stinkin’ wi’ drink!” 

The men went on, leaving Sheila and Henry together. 
She stood watching the men, oblivious seemingly of Henry ’s 
presence, until he put out his hand and touched hers. 

“Sheila!” he said. 

She snatched her hand away from him. “Lave me 
alone!” she exclaimed, and moved to the side of the road 
further from him. 


112 


CHANGING WINDS 


meant to try and stop it/' he said, '‘but somehow 1 
couldn ’t. I ... I did my best ! ’ ' 

He had followed her and was standing before her, plead 
ing with her, but she would not look at him. He stood 
for a while, thinking of something to say, and then put out 
his hand again and touched hers. "Sheila," he said. 

She swung round swiftly and struck him in the face 
with her clenched fist. 

' ‘ How dare you touch me ! " she cried and her eyes were 
full of fury. 

"Sheila!" 

"Don’t lay a finger on me . . . you . . . you coward 
you! You were afeard to stop it, an’ you run away, cryin’ 
like a wee ba!" He tried to come to her again, but she 
shrunk away from him. "Don’t come a-near me," she 
shouted at him. "I couldn’t thole you near me. I’d be 
sick! . . .’’ 

She stopped in her speech and walked away from him. 
He stared after her, unable to think or move. He could 
feel the smart of her blow tingling in his face, and he put 
his hand up mechanically to his cheek, and as he did so, he 
saw that his hand was still trembling. He could see her 
walking quickly on, her head erect and her hands clenched 
tightly by her side. He wanted to run after her, but he 
could not move. He tried to call to her, but his lips would 
not open. . . . 

The light was fading out of the sky, and the night was 
covering up the hills and fields, but still he stood there, 
staring up the road along which she had passed out of his 
sight. People passed him in the dusk and greeted him, 
but he did not answer, nor was he aware when they turned 
to look at him. Once, he was conscious of a loud report 
and a clatter of feet, but he did not think of it or of what 
it meant. In his mind, smashing like the blows of a ham- 
mer, came ceaselessly the sound of Sheila’s voice, calling 
him a coward. . . . 


CHANGING WINDS 


113 


8 

It was quite dark when he moved away. His mouth was 
very dry and his eyes were hot and sore, and his legs 
dragged as he walked. He was tired and miserable and he 
had a frightful sense of age. That morning he had wak- 
ened to manhood, full of pleasure in the beauty of living 
and growing things ; now, he was like an old man, longing 
for death but afraid to lose his life. There were stars 
above him, but no moon, and the tall trunks of the trees 
stood up like black phantoms before him, moaning and 
crying in the wind. He could hear the screech-owls hoot- 
ing in the dark, and the lonely yelp of a dog on a farm. 

He began to hurry, walking quickly and then running, 
afraid to look back, almost afraid to look forward . . . 
and as he ran, suddenly he fell on something soft. His 
hands slipped on wetness that smelt. . . . 

In the darkness he had fallen over the body of the horse 
which had been shot while he was standing where Sheila 
had left him. He gaped at it with distended eyes, and 
then, with a loud cry, he jumped up and fled home, with 
fear raging in his heart. 


THE EIGHTH CHAPTER 


1 

He fell asleep, after a long, wakeful night, and did not 
hear the maid who called him. Mr. Quinn, when he was 
told of the heaviness of Henry’s slumber, said “Let him 
lie on ! ” and so it was that he did not rise until noon. He 
came down heavy-eyed and irritable, and wandered about 
the garden in which he took no pleasure. Marsh came to 
him while he was there, full of enthusiasm because more 
pupils had attended the Language class than he had an- 
ticipated. 

“That girl, Sheila Morgan, wasn’t there!” 

“Oh!” said Henry. 

“I thought she’d be certain to come. She seemed so 
anxious to join the class. Perhaps she was prevented. I 
hope you’ll be able to come to-night, Henry! ...” 

Henry turned away impatiently. “I don’t think I shall 
go again,” he said in a surly voice. 

Marsh stared at him. “Not go again!” he exclaimed. 

“No.” 

“But! . . .” 

“Oh, I’m sick of the class. I’m sick of the whole thing. 
I’m sick of Irish! . . 

Marsh walked away from him, walked so quickly that 
Henry knew that he was trying to subdue the sudden rage 
that rose in him when people spoke slightingly of Irish 
things, and for a few moments he felt sorry and ready to 
follow him and apologise for what he had said; but the 
sorrow passed as quickly as it came. 

“It’s absurd of him to behave like that,” he said to 
himself, and went on his way about the garden. 

114 


CHANGING WINDS 


115 


Presently he saw Marsh approaching him, and he stood 
still and waited for him. 

“I’m sorry, Henry,” Marsh said when he had come up 
to him. 

“It was my fault,” Henry replied. 

“I ought not to have walked off like that . . . but I 
can’t bear to hear any one talking! ...” 

“I know you can’t,” Henry interrupted. “That’s why 
I ought not to have said what I did 1 ’ ’ 

But Marsh insisted on bearing the blame. “I ought to 
have remembered that you’re not feeling well,” he said, 
reproaching himself. “I get so interested in Ireland that 
I forget about people’s feelings. That’s my chief fault. 
I know it is. I must try to remember. ... I suppose you 
didn’t really mean what you said?” 

“Yes, I did,” Henry replied quickly. 

“But why?” 

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to. What’s the good 
of it anyhow? ...” 

Good of it! Henry ought to have known what a pas- 
sion of patriotism his scorn for the Language would pro- 
voke. 

“Oh, all right, John 1” he said impatiently. “I’ve heard 
all that before, and I don’t want to hear it again. You 
can argue as much as you like, but I can’t see any sense 
in wasting time on what’s over. And the Irish language 
is over and done with. Father’s quite right!” 

Marsh’s anger became intensified. “That’s the Belfast 
spirit in you,” he exclaimed. “The pounds, shillings and 
pence mood! I know what you think of the language. 
You think, what is the commercial value of it? Will it 
enable a boy to earn thirty shillings a week in an office? 
Is it as useful as Pitman ’s Shorthand ? That ’s what you ’re 
thinking! ...” 

“No, it’s not, but if it were, it would be very sensible!” 

“My God, Henry, can’t you realise that a nation’s lan- 
guage is the sound of a nation’s soul? Don’t you under- 


116 


CHANGING WINDS 


stand, man, that if we can’t speak our own language then 
our souls are silent, dumb, inarticulate? . . . don’t you 
see what I mean? . . . and all the time we’re using Eng- 
lish, we’re like people who read translations. I don’t care 
whether it is commercially valuable or not. That’s not the 
point. The point is that it’s us, that it’s our tongue, our 
language, that it distinguishes us from the English, in- 
sists on our difference from them. Do you see what I 
mean, Henry? We are different, aren’t we? You realise 
that, don’t you? We are different from the English, and 
nothing will ever make us like them. My God, I’d hate to 
be like them! ...” 

Henry fled from him, and, scarcely knowing what he 
was doing, ran across the fields towards Hamilton’s farm. 
As he went up the “loanie,” he remembered that Sheila 
had struck him in the face in her rage at his cowardice, 
and he stopped and wondered whether he should go on or 
not. And while he was waiting in the “loanie,” she came 
out of a field, driving a cow before her. 

2 

She did not speak, though he waited for her to say some- 
thing. The cow ambled up the “loanie,” and Sheila, 
glancing at him as if she did not recognise him, passed on, 
following it. 

“Sheila!” he called after her, but she did not answer, 
nor did she turn round. 

“I want to speak to you,” he said, going after her. 

“I don’t want to speak to you,” she replied, without 
looking at him. 

“But you must! ...” He thrust himself in front of 
her, and tried to take hold of her hands, but she eluded 
him. She lifted the sally rod she had in her hand and 
threatened him with it. “I’ll lash your face with this if 
you handle me,” she said. 


CHANGING WINDS 


117 


“All right,” he answered, dropping his hands and wait- 
ing for her to beat his face with the slender branch. 

She looked at him for a few moments, and then she threw 
the sally rod into the hedge. 

“What do you want?” she asked, and the tone of her 
voice was quieter. 

The cow, finding that it was not being followed, cropped 
the grass in the hedge and as they stood there, facing each 
other, they could hear the soft munch-munch as it tore the 
grass from the ground. 

“What do you want?” Sheila said again. 

“I want to speak to you! . . 

“Well, speak away!” 

But he did not know what to say to her. He thought 
that perhaps if he were to explain, she would forgive, but 
now that the opportunity to explain was open to him, he 
did not know what to say. 

“Are you turned dummy or what?” she asked, and the 
cruelty in her voice was deliberate. 

“Sheila,” he began, hesitatingly. 

“Well?” 

“I’m sorry about last night ! ’ ’ 

“What’s the good of bein’ sorry? ...” 

“I meant to stop it! . . .” 

“I daresay,” she said, laughing at him. 

“I did. I did, indeed. I can’t help feeling nervous. 
I ’ve always been like that. I want to do things ... I try 
to do them . . . but something inside me runs away . . . 
that’s what it is, Sheila ... it isn’t me that runs away 
. . .it’s something inside me!” 

“Bosh,” she said. 

“It’s true, Sheila. My father could tell you that. I 
always funk things, not because I want to funk them, 
but because I can’t help it. I’d give the world to be able 
to stop a horse, like that one last night, but I can’t do it. 
I get paralysed somehow! ...” 


118 


CHANGING WINDS 


“I never heard of any one like that before/’ she ex- 
claimed. 

“No, I don’t suppose you have. If you knew how 
ashamed I feel of myself, you’d feel sorry for me. I was 
awake the whole night!” 

“Were you?” 

“Yes. I kept on thinking you were angry with me and 
that I was a coward, and I could feel your fist in my 
face! . . 

“I’m sorry I hit you, Henry!” 

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “It served me right. 
And then when I did sleep, I kept on dreaming about it. 
Do you know, Sheila, I fell over the horse last night in 
the dark . . . they left it lying in the road after they shot 
it . . . and my hands slithered in the blood ! . . . ” 

“Aw, the poor baste!” she said, and she began to cry. 
“The poor dumb baste!” 

“And I kept on dreaming of that . . . my hands drib- 
bling in blood. . . . och! . . .” 

He could not go on because the recollection of his dreams 
horrified him. They had moved to the side of the “loanie” 
and he mechanically stopped and plucked a long grass and 
began to wind it round his fingers. 

“I think and think about things,” he murmured at last. 

She put out her hand and touched his arm. “Poor 
Henry,” she said. 

He threw the grass away and seized her hand in his. 

“Then you’ll forgive me?” he said eagerly. 

She nodded her head. 

“And you’ll still be my sweetheart, won’t you, and go 
for wa,lks with me? . . .” 

She withdrew her hand from his. “No, Henry,” she 
said, “you an’ me can’t go courtin’ no more !” 

“But why?” 

“Because I couldn’t marry a man was afeard of things. 
I’d never be happy with a man like that. I’d fall out with 
you if you were a collie, I know I would, an’ I’d be miserable 


CHANGING WINDS 


119 


if my man hadn^t the pluck of any other man. I’m sorry 
I bate you last night, but I ’d do it again if it happened an- 
other time ... an’ there ’d be no good in that!” 

‘‘But you said you’d marry me! . . 

“Och, sure, Henry, you know well I couldn’t marry you. 
You wouldn’t be let. I’m a poor girl, an’ you’re a high-up 
lad. Whoever heard tell of the like of us marryin’, ex- 
cept mebbe in books. I knew well we’d never marry, but 
I liked goin’ about with you, an’ listenin’ to your crack, 
an’ you kissin’ me an’ tellin’ me the way you loved me. 
You’ve a quare nice English voice on you, an’ you know it 
well, an’ I just liked to hear it . . . but didn’t I know 
rightly, you’d never marry the like of me!” 

“I will, Sheila, I will!” 

“Ah, wheesht with you. What good ’ud a man like you 
be to a girl like me. I’ll have this farm when my Uncle 
Matt dies, an’ what use ’ud you be on it, will you tell me, 
you that runs away cry in’ from a frightened horse?” 

“You could sell the farm! ...” 

“Sell the farm!” she exclaimed. “Dear bless us, boy, 
what are you sayin’ at all? Sell this farm, an’ it’s been 
in our family these generations past ! There ’s been Ham- 
iltons in this house for a hundred an’ fifty years an’ more. 
I wouldn’t sell it for the world!” 

“But I must have you, Sheila. I must marry you!” 

“Why must you?” 

“I just must! . . .” 

She turned to look at the grazing cow, and then turned 
back to him. “That’s chile’s talk,” she said. “You must 
because you must. Away on home now, an’ lave me to do 
my work. Sure, you’re not left school yet!” She left 
him abruptly, and walked up to the cow, slapping its flanks 
and shouting “Kimmup, there! Kimmup!” and the beast 
tossed its head, and ran forward a few paces, and then 
sauntered slowly up the “loanie” towards the byre. 

“Good-bye, Henry!” Sheila called out when she had 
gone a little way. 


120 


CHANGING WINDS 


you be at the class to-night!’^ he shouted after 

her. 

“I will not/^ she answered. ‘‘I^m not goin’ to the class 
no more!’^ 

He watched her as she went on up the “loanie’^ after 
the cow, hoping that she would turn again and call to him, 
but she did not look round. He could hear her calling to 
the beast, ‘‘Gwon now! Gwon out of that now!’^ and 
then he saw the cow turn into the yard, and in a moment 
or two Sheila followed it. He thought that she must turn 
to look at him then, and he was ready to wave his hand to 
her, but she did not look round. ‘ ‘ Gwon now ! Gwon up 
out of that ! ’ * was all that he heard her saying. 

3 

His father was standing at the front door when he re- 
turned home. Mr. Quinn’s face was set and grave look- 
ing, and he did not smile at his son. 

‘ ‘ I want you, Henry, ’ ’ he said, beckoning to him. 

“Yes, father?” Henry replied, looking at his father in 
a questioning fashion. ‘ ‘ Is anything wrong ? ’ ’ 

Mr. Quinn did not answer. He turned and led the way 
to the library. 

“Sit down,” he said, when Henry had entered the room 
and shut the door. 

“What is it, father?” 

“Henry, what’s between you an’ that niece of Matt 
Hamilton’s?” 

“Between us!” 

“Aye, between you. You were out on the Ballymena 
road with her last night when I thought you were in bed 
with a sore head.” 

All the romance of his love for Sheila Morgan suddenly 
died out, and he was conscious of nothing but his father’s 
stern look and the stiff set of his lips as he sat there at 


CHANGING WINDS 


121 


his writing-table, demanding what there was between 
Henry and Sheila. 

“I’m in love with her, father!” he answered. 

“Are you?” 

“Yes, father, but she’s not in love with me. She’s just 
told me so.” 

“You’ve seen her this mornin’ again?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, I’m glad she has more sense nor you seem to 
have. Damn it, Henry, are you a fool or what? The 
whole of Ballymartin ’s talkin’ about the pair of you. Do 
you think that you can walk up the road with a farm-girl, 
huggin’ her an’ kissin’ her an’ doin’ God knows what, an’ 
the whole place not know about it?” 

“I didn’t think of that, father! ...” 

“Didn’t think of it! . . . Look here, Henry, Sheila Mor- 
gan’s a respectable girl, do you hear? an’ I’ll not have you 
makin’ a fool of her. I know there’s some men thinks 
they have a right to their tenants’ daughters, but by God 
if you harmed a girl on my land, Henry, I’d shoot you 
with my own hands. Do you hear me ? ” 

Henry looked at his father uncomprehendingly. ‘ ‘ Harm 
her, father!” he said. 

‘ ‘ Aye, harm her ! What do you think a girl like that, as 
good-lookin’ as her, gets out of goin’ up the road with a 
lad like you that’s born above her? A bellyful of pain, 
that’s all!” 

“I don’t know what you mean, father!” 

“Well, it’s time you learned. I’ll talk to you plumb an’ 
plain, Henry. I’ll not let you seduce a girl on my land, 
do you hear? They can do that sort of thing in England, 
if they like ... it’s nothin’ to me what the English do 
. . . but by God I’ll not have a girl on my land ruined by 
you or by anybody else ! ’ ’ 

Mr. Quinn’s voice was more angry than Henry had ever 
heard it. 


m CHANGING WINDS 

“Father,” Henry said, “I want to marry Sheila! . . 

“What?” 

Mr. Quinn’s fist had been raised as if he were about to 
bang his desk to emphasise his words, but he was so star- 
tled by Henry’s speech that he forgot his intention, and 
he sat there, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, with his fist 
still suspended in the air, so that Henry almost laughed 
at his comical look. 

“What’s that you say?” he said, when he had recovered 
from his astonishment. 

‘ ‘ I want to marry her, but she won ’t have me ! ” 

Mr. Quinn’s anger left him. He leant back in his re- 
volving chair and laughed. 

“By God, that’s good!” he said. “By God, it is! 
Marry her! Oh, dear, oh, dear!” 

“I don’t know why you’re laughing, father! ...” 

“An’ I thought you up to no good. Oh, ho, ho!” He 
took out his handkerchief and rubbed his eyes. “Well, 
thank God, the girl’s got more wit nor you have. In the 
name of God, lad, what would you marry her for?” 

“Because I love her, father!” 

“My backside to that for an answer!” Mr. Quinn 
snapped. “You know well you couldn’t marry her, a girl 
like that!” 

“I don’t know it at all! . . .” 

“Well, I’ll tell you why then. Because you’re a gentle- 
man an’ she isn’t a lady, that’s why. There’s hundreds 
of years of breedin’ in you, Henry, an’ there’s no breedin’ 
at all in her, nothin’ but good nature an’ good looks ! . . .” 

“The Hamiltons have lived at their farm for more than 
a hundred and fifty years, father ! ’ ’ 

“So they have, an’ decent, good stock they are, but that 
doesn’t put them on our level. Listen, Henry, the one 
thing that’s most important in this world is blood an’ 
breedin’. There’s people goes about the world sayin’ 
everybody’s as good as everybody else, but you’ve only 


CHANGING WINDS 


123 

got to see people when there’s bother on to find out who’s 
good an’ who isn’t. It’s at times like that that blood an’ 
breedin’ come out! ...” 

It was then that Henry told his father of his cowardice 
when the horse ran away. He told the whole story, and 
insisted on Sheila’s scorn for him. Mr. Quinn did not 
speak while the story was being told. He sat at the desk 
with his chin buried in his fingers, listening patiently. 
Once or twice he looked up when Henry hesitated in his 
recital, and once he seemed as if he were about to put out 
his hand to his son, but he did not do so. He did not 
speak or move until the story was ended. 

“I’m glad you told me, Henry,” he said quietly when 
Henry had finished. “I’m sorry I thought you were 
meanin’ the girl an injury. I beg your pardon for that, 
Henry. The girl’s a decent girl, a well-meant girl ... a 
well-meant girl! ... I wish to God, you were at Trinity, 
my son! Come on, now, an’ have somethin’ to ate. Be- 
god, I’m hungry. I could ate a horse. I could ate two 
horses! ...” He put his arm in Henry’s and they left 
the library together. “You’ll get over it, my son, you’ll 
get over it. It does a lad good to break his heart now an’ 
again. Teaches him the way the world works ! Opens his 
mind for him, an’ lets him get a notion of the feel of 
things! . . .” 

They were just outside the dining-room when he said 
that. Mr. Quinn turned and looked at Henry for a sec- 
ond or two, and it seemed to Henry that he was about to 
say something intimate to him, but he did not do so: he 
turned away quickly and opened the door. 

“I suppose John Marsh is eatin’ all the food,” he said 
with extraordinary heartiness. “Are you eatin’ all the 
food, John Marsh? I’ll wring your damned neck if you 


CHANGING WINDS 


lU 


4 

That evening, after dinner, Mr. Quinn and John Marsh 
were sitting together. Henry had gone out of the room 
for a while, leaving Mr. Quinn to smoke a cigar while 
John Marsh corrected some exercises by the students of 
the Language class. 

“Marsh !” Mr. Quinn said suddenly, after a long silence. 

Marsh looked up quickly. “Yes, Mr. Quinn he re^ 
plied. 

“Henry’s in love! ...” 

“Is he?” 

“Yes. With that girl, Sheila Morgan, Matt Hamilton’s 
niece ! ’ ’ 

Marsh put his exercises aside. “Dear me!” he ex- 
claimed. 

There did not appear to be anything else to say. 

“So I’m goin’ to send him away,” Mr. Quinn went on. 

‘ ‘ Away ? ’ ’ 

“Yes. I don’t quite know where I shall send him. It’s 
too soon yet to send him up to Trinity. I’ve a notion of 
sendin’ you an’ him on a walkin’ tour in Connacht. The 
pair of you can talk that damned language ’til you’re sick 
of it with the people that understands it ! ” 

Marsh was delighted. He thought that Mr. Quinn’s 
proposal was excellent, and he was certain that it would 
be very good for Henry to come into contact with people 
to whom the language was native. 

“ Wheesht a minute. Marsh!” Mr. Quinn interrupted. 
‘ ‘ I want to talk to you about Henry. It ’s a big thing for 
a lad of his age to fall in love ! ’ ’ 

“I suppose it is.” 

“There’s no supposin’ about it. It is! He’s just at 
the age when women begin to matter to a man, an’ I don’t 
want him to go an’ get into any bother over the head of 
them ! ’ ’ 

“Bother?” 


CHANGING WINDS 


125 


‘ ‘ Aye. Do you never think about women, John Marsh ? ’ ’ 
“Oh, yes. Sometimes. One can^t help it now and 
then! . . . 

“No, begod, one can’t 1’^ Mr. Quinn exclaimed. “Do 
you know this, John Marsh, I never can make out whether 
God did a good day’s work the day He made women! 
They’re the most unsettlin’ things in the world. You’d 
think to look at me, I was a fairly quiet sort of a steady 
man, wouldn’t you? Well, I’m not. There’s whiles when 
a woman makes my head buzz . . . just the look of her, 
an’ the way she turns her head or moves her legs. I’m a 
hefty fellow, John Marsh, for all I’m the age I am, an’ I 
know what it is to feel damn near silly with desire. But 
all the same, I can keep control of myself, an’ I’ve never 
wronged a woman in my life. That’s a big thing for any 
man to be able to say, an’ there’s few that can say it, but 
I tell you it ’s been a hell of a fight ! . . . ” 

He lay back in the chair and puffed smoke above his 
head for a while. “A hell of a fight,” he murmured, and 
then did not speak for a while. 

“Yes?” said John Marsh. 

“I’ve been down the lanes of a summer night, an’ seen 
young girls from the farms about, with fine long hair 
hangin’ down their backs, an’ them smilin’ an’ lovely . . . 
an’ begod, I’ve had to hurry past them, hurry hard, damn 
near run! . . . Mind you, they were good girls, John 
Marsh! I don’t want you to think they were out lookin’ 
for men. They weren’t. But they were young, an’ they 
were just learnin’ things, an’ I daresay I could have had 
them if I’d tried ... an’ I don’t think there’s any real 
harm in men an’ women goin’ together . . . but we’ve set- 
tled, all of us, that, real or no real, there is some sort of 
harm in it, an’ we’ve agreed to condemn that sort of thing, 
an’ so I submit to the law. Do you follow me?” 

“No, not quite. Those sort of things don’t arise for 
me. I ’m a Catholic and I obey the Church ’s laws ! . . . ” 
‘ ‘ I know you do. But I ’m a man, not a Catholic ! . . . 


126 


CHANGING WINDS 


Now, don’t lose your temper. I couldn’t help lettin’ that 
slip out. . . . What I mean is this. There’s a lot of way- 
wardness in all of us, that’s pleasant enough if it’s checked 
when it gets near the limit of things, but there has to be a 
check!” 

“Yes?” Marsh said. “And in my case the check is 
the Church, the expression on earth of God’s will! . . .” 

“Well, in my case it isn’t. In my case it’s my sense of 
responsibility as a gentleman. We’ve got ourselves into 
crowds that must be controlled somehow, and there isn’t 
much room for wayward people in a crowd. That’s why 
geniuses get such a rotten time. Now, my notion of a 
gentleman is a man who controls the crowd by controllin’ 
himself. D’you follow me? He knows that the crowd’ll 
bust up an’ become a dirty riot if it’s let out of control, 
an’ he knows that he can influence it best an’ keep the 
whip hand of it, if it knows that he isn’t doin’ anything 
that he tells it not to do. D’you see?” 

“Yes,” Marsh said. “That’s the Catholic religion ! . . .” 

“I know as well as I’m livin’,” Mr. Quinn went on, 
“that I have enough power over myself to know when to 
stop an’ when to go on. That’s been bred in me. That’s 
why I’m a gentleman. But I know that if I let myself 
do things that I can control, I’ll be givin’ an example 
to hundreds of other people who aren’t gentlemen an’ can’t 
control themselves . . . don’t know when to stop an’ when 
to go on ... an’ so I don’t do them. An’ that’s a gen- 
tleman’s job, John Marsh, an’ when gentlemen stop that, 
then begod it’s good-bye to a decent community. That’s 
why England’s goin’ to blazes . . . because her gentlemen 
have forgotten the first job of the gentleman : to keep him- 
self in strict control, to be reticent, to conceal his feelings ! ’ ’ 

But John Marsh would not agree with him. “England 
is going to blazes,” he said, “because England has lost her 
religion. If England were Catholic, England would be 
noble again! ...” 

“Just like France and Spain and Italy,” Mr. Quinn 


CHANGING WINDS 


121 


replied. ^‘Bosh, John Marsh, bosh! I tell you, the test 
of a nation is this question of gentlemen ! . . . ^ ’ 

‘‘The test of a nation is its belief in God ... its church,’’ 
said John Marsh. 

• “Well, Ireland believes in God, doesn’t it? The Catholic 
Church is fairly strong here, isn’t it? An’ what sort of 
a Church is it? A gentleman’s church or a peasant’s 
church? Look at the priests, John Marsh, look at them! 
My God, what bounders! Little greedy, grubbin’ blighters, 
livin’ for their Easter offerin’s, an’ doin’ damn little for 
their money. What do you think takes them into the 
church? Love of God? Love of man? No, bedam if it 
is. Conceit an’ snobbery an’ the desire for a soft job takes 
about nine out of ten of them. . . . Well, well, I’m runnin’ 
away from myself. What I want to say is this : the Cath- 
olic church’ll never be worth a damn in Ireland or any- 
where else, ’til its priests are gentlemen. No church is 
worth a damn unless its priests are gentlemen ! ’ ’ 

“But what do you mean by gentlemen, Mr. Quinn?” 

“I mean men who are keepin’ a tight hold on themselves. 
Mortify in’ their flesh ... all that sort of stuff ... so 
that they won’t give the mob an excuse for breakin’ loose !” 

Marsh wondered why Mr. Quinn was talking in this 
strain and tried to draw him back to the subject of Henry’s 
love of Sheila. 

“I’m cornin’ to that,” said Mr. Quinn, pointing his 
cigar at him. “Listen, John, there were two men that 
might have done big things in Irelan’ and Englan’ — ^Par- 
nell an’ Lord Randolph Churchill, an’ they didn’t because 
they weren’t gentlemen. They couldn’t control them- 
selves. There isn’t a house in Ulster that hasn’t got the 
photographs of those two men in some album. ...” 

“Parnell ? ’ ’ Marsh exclaimed. 

“Aye, Parnell. Him an’ Randy Churchill side by side 
in the one album ! Lord bless me, John Marsh, the Ulster 
people took great pride in Parnell, even the bitterest Or- 
angeman among them, because he was a man, an’ not a 


128 


CHANGING WINDS 


gas-bag like Dan O’Connell. Of course, he was a Protes- 
tant! . . . But he couldn’t keep from nuzzlin’ over a 
woman . . . an’ up went everything. An’ Randy Church- 
ill ... I mind him well, a flushed-lookin’ man. ... I 
heard him talkin’ in Belfast one time ... he bust up every- 
thing because he would not control himself. If he’d been 
a gentleman . . . but he wasn’t . . . the Churchills never 
were. . . . Nor was Parnell. Well, now, I don’t want 
Henry to go to bits like that. Henry’s got power of some 
sort, John ... I don’t know what sort . . . but there’s 
power in him . . . and I want it to come out right. He’s 
the sort that’ll go soft on women if he’s not careful. He’d 
be off after every young, nice-lookin’ girl he meets if he 
were let ... an ’ God knows what the end of that would be. 
There’s this girl, Sheila Morgan . . . you’ve seen 
her? ...” 

Marsh nodded his head, and said, ‘‘She comes to the 
Language class.” 

“Well, you know the sort she is: fine, healthy, good- 
lookin’, lusty girl. That sort stirs the blood in a lad like 
Henry. I want him to get into the state in which he can 
look at her an’ lave her alone! Do you follow me?” 

“Yes.” 

“He’s not in that state now. He’s soft, oh, he’s damned 
soft. Look here, John Marsh, do you know what I think 
about young fellows? I think they’re the finest things in 
the world. Youth, I mean. An’ I figure it out this way, 
that Youth has the right to three things: love an’ work an’ 
fun; an’ it ought to have them about equally. The only 
use of old people like me is to see that the young ’uns don’t 
get the proportions all wrong, too much love an ’ not enough 
work, or the other way round. Henry’s very likely to get 
them all wrong, an’ I want to see that he doesn’t. Now, 
you understand me, don’t you? I’m a long-winded man, 
an’ it’s hard to make out what I’m drivin’ at, but that can’t 
be helped. Everybody has a nature, an’ I have mine, an’ 
bedam to it !” 


CHANGING WINDS 


129 


'‘What do you want me to do?” Marsh asked, putting 
his exercises together. 

“I want you to try an’ put some big wish into his heart,” 
Mr. Quinn replied. “Try an’ make him as eager about 
Irelan’ as you are. I want him to spend himself for some- 
thing that’s bigger than he is, instead of spendin’ himself 
on something that’s smaller than he is.” 

“But why not do that yourself, Mr. Quinn?” 

Mr. Quinn got up from his chair and walked about the 
room. “It’s very hard for a man to talk to his son in the 
way that a stranger can,” he said. “An’ besides I ... I 
love Henry, John Marsh, an’ my love for him upsets my 
balance ! ’ ’ 

“Can’t you control that, Mr. Quinn?” Marsh asked. 

“Control it! Begod, John Marsh, if you were a father 
you wouldn’t ask such a damn silly question. Here, have 
a cigar ! Henry ’s comin ’ back ! ’ ’ 

When Henry entered the room, his father was lying back 
in his chair, puffing smoke into the air, while John Marsh 
was cutting the end of his cigar. 

“The post’s come in,” he said. 

“Anything for me?” his father asked. 

“No. There was only one letter. For me. It’s from 
Ninian Graham!” 

“Nice chap, Ninian Graham,” Mr. Quinn murmured. 

‘ ‘ He wants me to go over to Boveyhayne for a while. ’ ’ 

“Does he?” 

“Yes. Gilbert Farlow’s staying with them. I should 
like to go.” 

“Well, we’ll see about it in the morning,” said Mr. 
Quinn. “I was thinking of sending you on a walking tour 
with John here. To Connacht!” 

“You could talk to the people in Irish, Henry,” John 
added. 

Henry twirled Ninian ’s letter in his fingers. “I’d like 
to go to Boveyhayne,” he said. “I want to see Ninian and 
Gilbert again! ...” 


130 


CHANGING WINDS 


'‘But the language, Henry! . . 

“I hate the damned language!’’ Henry exclaimed pas- 
sionately. “I’m sick of Ireland. I’m sick of! . . 

Mr. Quinn got up and put his hand on Henry’s shoulder. 

“All right, Henry,” he said. “You can go to Bovey- 
hayne ! ’ ’ 

5 

Up in his bedroom, Henry re-read Ninian’s letter, and 
then he replied to it. Ninian wrote: 

Blighter: 

Gilbert here. He’s been here for a week, and he says 
you ought to be here, too. So do I. Can’t you come to 
Boveyhayne for a fortnight anyhow? If you can stay 
longer, do. Gilbert says it’s awful to think that you’re 
going to that hole in Dublin where there isn’t even a Boat 
Race, and the least you can do is to come and have a good 
time here. I can’t think why Irish people want to be 
Irish. It seems so damn silly. Gilbert’s writing a play. 
He has done about a page and a half of it, and it’s most 
awful bilge. He keeps on reading it out to me. He read 
some of it to me last night when I was brushing my teeth 
which is a damn dangerous thing to do, and I had to clout 
his head severely for him. He is a chap. He got poor 
Mary into a row on Sunday. We took him to church with 
us, and when the Vicar was reading the first lesson, all 
about King Solomon swanking before the Queen of Sheba 
and showing off his gold plate, Gilbert turned to Mary and 
said out loud, Ostentatious chap, Solomon! Anybody 
could see he was a Jew!” and Mary burst out laughing. 
The Vicar was frightfully sick about it, and jawed Gilbert 
after the service, and the mater told Mary the truth about 
herself. I must say it was rather funny. I very nearly 
laughed myself. Do be a decent chap and come over soon. 
You’ll just be in time for the mackerel fishing. Gilbert 


CHANGING WINDS 


131 


and Mary and I went out with Jim Eattenbury yesterday 
and caught dozens. 

Your affectionate friend, 

Ninian Graham. 


Henryks reply was: 

Dear Ninian: 

Thanks awfully. Vll come as soon as 1 can get away. 
1 spoke to my father to-night, and he says 1 can go to 
Boveyhayne. I’ll send a telegram to you, telling you when 
to expect me. I’m looking forward to reading Gilbert’s 
play. I hope he’ll have more of it written by the time I 
get to Boveyhayne. A page and a half isn’t much, is it? 
and I don’t wonder you get sick of hearing it over and 
over. I shall have to write something, too, but I don’t 
know what to write about. We can talk of that when we 
meet. It is awfully kind of Mrs. Graham to have me again. 
Please thank her for me, and give my love to Mary and 
Gilbert, and tell him not to be an old ass, yapping like that 
in church. No wonder the vicar was sick. 

Your affectionate friend, 

Henry Quinn. 


THE NINTH CHAPTER 


1 

Three days later, Henry left Ballymartin and travelled to 
Belfast in the company of John Marsh. In Belfast they 
were to separate: Marsh was to return to Dublin and 
Henry was to cross by the night boat to Liverpool, and 
proceed from there to London, and then on from Waterloo 
to Boveyhayne. Marsh, a little sad because the Bally- 
martin classes must now collapse, but greatly glad to return 
to the middle of Irish activities in Dublin, had turned 
over in his mind what Mr. Quinn had said about Henry’s 
future, and he was wondering exactly what he should say 
to Henry. They had several hours to spend in Belfast, 
and Marsh proposed that they should visit the shipyards 
and, if they had time, inspect a linen mill; and Henry, 
who had always felt great pride when he saw the stocks and 
gantries of the shipyards and reflected that out of the 
multitudinous activities of Ulster men the greatest ships in 
the world were created, eagerly assented to Marsh’s pro- 
posal. Mr. Quinn had given them a letter of introduction 
to a member of the great firm of Harland and Wolff, and 
Mr. Arthurs, because of his friendship for Mr. Quinn, con- 
ducted them through the yard himself. 

They stayed so long in the shipyard that there was no 
time left for the visit to the linen mill, and so, when they 
had had tea, they set off to the Great Northern Railway 
station where Marsh was to catch his train to Dublin. 

Mr. Arthurs’ immense energy and his devotion to his 
work and his extraordinary pride not only in the shipyard 
but in the men who worked in it had made a deep impres- 

132 


CHANGING WINDS 


133 


sion on Marsh and Henry. He seemed to know the most 
minute details of the vast complication of functions that 
operated throughout the works. While they were passing 
through one of the shops, a horn had blown, and instantly 
a great crowd of men and lads had poured out of the yard 
on their way to their dinner, and Mr. Arthurs, standing 
aside to watch them, and greeting here one and there an- 
other, turned to Marsh and said, ‘‘Those are my pals!” 
Thousands of men, grimy from their work, each of them 
possessed of some peculiar skill or great strength, thousands 
of them, “pals” of this one man whose active brain con- 
ceived ships of great magnitude and endurance 1 Mr. Ar- 
thurs had passed through the shipyard from apprenticeship 
to directorship : he had worked in this shop and in that, 
just as the men worked, and had learned more about ship- 
building than it seemed possible for any man to learn. ‘ ‘ He 
knows how many rivets there are in the Oceanic,” one of 
the foremen in the yard said to Marsh when they were 
being shown round. “He^s the great boy for buildin’ 
boats ! ” 

Marsh, until then, had never met a man like Mr. Arthurs. 
His life had been passed in Dublin, among people who 
thought and talked and speculated, but seldom did; and 
he had been habituated to scoffing talk at Belfast men 
. . . “money-grubbers” . . . mitigated, now and then, 
by a grudging tribute to their grit and great energy and 
resource. Mr. Arthurs had none of the money-grubbing 
spirit in him ; his devotion to his work of shipbuilding was 
as pure as the devotion of a Samurai to the honour of 
Japan; and Marsh, who was instantly sensitive to the 
presence of a noble man, felt strongly drawn to him. 

“I wish we could get him on our side, Henry!” he said, 
as they sat in the station, waiting for the train to draw up 
to the platform. “I’d give all the lawyers we’ve got for 
that one man!” 

“Father thinks Tom Arthurs is the greatest shipbuilder 
that’s ever lived,” Henry answered. 


134 


CHANGING WINDS 


“He might be the greatest Irishman that’s ever lived,” 
Marsh rejoined, “if he’d only give a quarter of the devo- 
tion to Ireland that he gives to ships.” 

“I suppose he thinks he’s giving all his devotion to 
Ireland now . . . and he is really. Isn’t he, John? His 
firm is famous all over the world, and he’s one of the 
men that have made it famous. It must be very fine 
for him to think that he’s doing big things for his coun- 
try!” 

Marsh nodded his head. ^^We’re rather foolish about 
Belfast in Dublin,’’ he said. “After all, real work is done 
here, isn ’t it ? And the chief industry of Dublin . . . what 
is it? Absolutely unproductive! Porter! Barrels and 
barrels of it, floating down the Liffey and nothing, nothing 
real, floating back! I like that man Arthurs. I wish to 
heaven we had him on our side !” 

“He’s a Unionist,” Henry replied. 

It occurred to Marsh, in the middle of his reflections on 
Tom Arthurs, that he should ask Henry what he proposed 
to do for Ireland. 

“I’d like to do work as big and fine as Arthurs does,” 
he said. “Wouldn’t you, Henry?” 

“Yes.” 

“What do you propose to do, Henry?” 

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought definitely about that 
sort of thing yet. I’ve just imagined I’d like to do some- 
thing. I’m afraid I can’t build ships! ...” 

“There are other things besides ships, Henry!” 

“I know that. John, I’m going to say something that’ll 
make you angry, but I can’t help that. When Tom Ar- 
thurs was showing us over the Island, I couldn ’t help think- 
ing that all that Gaelic movement was a frightful waste 
of time ! ’ ’ Marsh made a gesture, but Henry would not let 
him speak. “No, don’t interrupt me, John,” he said. 
“I must say what I feel. Look at the Language class at 
Ballymartin. What’s been the good of all the work you 
put into it ? ” 


CHANGING WINDS 


135 


‘‘WeVe given them a knowledge of a national separate- 
ness, haven’t we?” 

“Have we? They were keener on the dances, John. I 
don’t believe we’ve done anything of the sort, and if we 
had, I think it would be a pity ! ’ ’ 

“A pity! A pity to make the Irish people realise that 
they’re Irish and different from the English!” 

“Oh, you won’t agree, I know, John, but I think Tom 
Arthurs is doing better work for Ireland than you are,” 
Henry retorted. 

“He’s doing good work, very good work, but not better 
work than I am. He’s establishing an Irish industry, but 
I’m helping to establish an Irish nation, an Irish 
soul! ...” 

“That’s what you want to do, but I wonder whether it’s 
what you are doing,” said Henry. 

They were silent for a while, and before they spoke again, 
the train backed into the station, and they passed through 
the barriers so that Marsh could secure his seat. 

“Well, what do you propose to do for Ireland?” Marsh 
asked again, when he had entered his carriage. 

“The best I can, I suppose. I don’t know yet! ...” 

Marsh turned quickly to Henry and put his hand on his 
shoulder. “Henry,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind . . . 
I know about Sheila Morgan and you! ...” 

“You know? ...” 

“Yes. I’m sorry about that. I don’t think you should 
let it upset you!” 

Henry did not reply for a few moments, but sat still 
staring in front of him. In a sub-conscious way, he was 
wondering why it was that the carriages were not 
cleaner. . . . 

“I’m frightfully miserable, John,” he said at last. 

“But why, Henry?” 

“Oh, because of everything. I don’t know. I’m a fool, 
I suppose ! ’ ’ 

“You’re not going to pieces just because you’ve fallen 


136 


CHANGING WINDS 


in love with a girl and it’s turned out wrong? My dear 
Henry, that’s a poor sort of a spirit!” 

‘‘I know it is, but I’m a sloppy fellow! ...” 

“This alfair with Sheila Morgan is all the more reason 
why you should think of something big to do. I wish you 
were coming to Dublin with me now. Dublin’s very beau- 
tiful in the summer, and we could go up into the mountains 
and talk about things.” 

“Oh, well, we shall meet in Dublin fairly soon,” Henry 
replied, smiling at Marsh. It had been settled that he w^as 
to enter Trinity a little earlier than his father had previ- 
ously planned. 

“Yes, that’s true !” 

The hour at which the train was due to depart came, 
and Henry got out of the carriage and stood on the plat- 
form while Marsh, his head thrust through the window, 
talked to him. 

“You might write to me,” he said. “We ought not to 
d^ift away from each other, Henry! ...” 

“We won’t do that. We’ll see each other in Dublin.” 

“Yes, of course. You must meet Galway when you come 
back. He’s a schoolmaster and a barrister and a poet 
and heaven knows what not. He ’s a splendid fellow. Per- 
haps he’ll persuade you to take more interest in Irish 
things!” 

“Perhaps !” 

The guard blew his whistle, and the train began to move 
out of the station. 

“Don’t get too English, Henry!” Marsh shouted, wav- 
ing his hand in farewell. 

Henry smiled at him, but did not answer. 

“Good-bye!” Marsh called to him. 

‘ ‘ Good-bye ! ’ ’ Henry answered. 

The train swung round a bend and disappeared on its 
way south, and Henry, strangely desolate, turned and 
walked away from the station. 


CHANGING WINDS 


137 


2 

In the excitement of leaving Balljnnartin and sight- 
seeing in the shipyard, he had almost forgotten Sheila Mor- 
gan, but now, his mind stimulated by his talk with Marsh 
and his spirit depressed by his loneliness, his thoughts re- 
turned to her, and it seemed to him that he detested her. 
She had insulted him, struck him, humiliated and shamed 
him. When he remembered that he had told her of his 
love for her and had asked her to marry him, and had 
been told in reply that she wanted a man, not a coward, 
he felt that he could not bear to return to Ireland again. 
His mood was mingled misery and gladness. At Bovey- 
hayne, thank heaven, he would be free of Sheila and prob- 
ably he would never think of her again. Gilbert and Ni- 
nian would fill his mind, and of course there would be Mrs. 
Graham and Mary. Mary ! It was strange that he should 
have let Mary slip out of his thoughts and let Sheila slip 
into them. He had actually proposed to Mary and she 
had accepted him, and then he had left her and forgotten 
her because of Sheila. He remembered that he had not 
replied to the letter she had written to him before John 
Marsh came to Ballymartin. He had intended to write, 
but somehow he had not done so . . . and then Sheila came, 
and it was impossible to write to her. He wondered what 
he should say to her when they met. Would she come to 
Whitcombe station to meet him? What was he to say to 
her? . . . 

He had treated her shabbily. Of course, she was only a 
kid, as Ninian himself would say, but then he had made 
love to her, and anyhow she would be less of a kid now than 
she was when he last saw her. . . . He got tired of walking 
about the streets, and he made his way to the quays and 
passed across the gangway on to the deck of the steamer. 
A cool air was blowing up the Lagan from the Lough, and 
when he leaned over the side of the ship he could see the 
dark skeleton shape of the shipyard. His thoughts were 


138 


CHANGING WINDS 


extraordinarily confused, rambling about his father and 
Sheila Morgan and John Marsh and Mary Graham and 
Tom Arthurs and Ireland and ships and England and Gil- 
bert Farlow and Ninian and Roger. . . . 

*‘I ought never to have thought of any one but Mary,^’ he 
said to himself at last. “I really love her. I was only 
. . . only passing the time with Sheila!’’ 

“Well, thank God I’ll soon be in Devonshire,” he went 
on, “and out of all this. If only my Trinity time were 
over, and I were settled in London with Gilbert and the 
others, I’d be happy again!” He thought of John Marsh, 
and as he leant over the side of the boat, looking down on 
the dark water flowing beneath him, he seemed to see 
Marsh’s eager face, framed in the window of the railway 
carriage. He almost heard Marsh saying again, “Well, 
what do you propose to do for Ireland? ...” 

“Oh, damn Ireland,” he said out loud. 

He walked away from the place where he had imagined 
he had seen Marsh’s face peering at him out of the water, 
and as he walked along the deck, he could hear the noise 
of hammering in the shipyard made by the men on the 
night-shift. Tom Arthurs ’s brain was still working, though 
Tom Arthurs was now at home. 

“That’s real work,” Henry murmured to himself, “and 
a lot better than gabbling about Ireland’s soul as if it 
were the only soul in the world! Poor old John! I dis- 
appoint him horribly. ...” He was standing in the bows 
of the boat, looking towards the Lough. “I wonder,” he 
said to himself, “whether Mary ’ll be at Whitcombe sta- 
tion!” 


3 

The peculiar sense of isolation which overwhelms an 
Irishman when he is in England, fell upon Henry the 
moment he climbed into the carriage at Lime Street sta- 
tion. None of the passengers in his compartment spoke to 


CHANGING WINDS 


139 


each other, whereas in Ireland, every member of the com- 
pany would have been talking like familiars in a few min- 
utes. About an hour after the train had left Liverpool, 
some one leant across to the passenger facing him and 
asked for a match, and a box of matches was passed to him 
without a word from the man who owned them. 

‘ ‘ Thanks ! ’ ’ said the passenger who had borrowed the box, 
as he returned it. No more was said by any one for half 
an hour, and then the man opposite to Henry stretched 
himself and said, ‘‘We’re getting along!” and turned and 
laid his head against the window and went to sleep. 

“We are different 1 ’ ’ Henry thought to himself. “ We ’re 
certainly different . . . only I wonder does the difference 
matter much ! ’ ’ 

He tried to make conversation with his neighbour, but 
was unsuccessful, for his neighbour replied only in mono- 
syllables, and sometimes did not even articulate at all, con- 
tenting himself with a grunt. . . . 

“Well, why should he talk to me?” Henry thought to- 
himself. “He isn’t interested in me or my opinions, and 
perhaps he wants to read or think! ...” ' 

Marsh would have denied that the man wanted to think. 
He would have denied that the man had the capacity to 
think at all. Henry remembered how Marsh had general- 
ised about the English. “They live on their instincts,” he 
had said. “They never live on their minds!” and he had 
quoted from an article in an English newspaper in which 
the writer had lamented over the decline and fall of in- 
tellect among his countrymen. The writer declared that 
no one would pay to see a play that made a greater demand 
upon the mind than is made in a musical comedy, and that 
even this slight demand was proving to be more than 
many people could bear : the picture palace was destroying 
even the musical comedy. 

“But are we any better than that?” Henry had asked 
innocently, and Marsh, indignant, had declared that the 
Irish were immeasurably better than that. 


140 


CHANGING WINDS 


“But are we?’’ Henry asked himself as the train swiftly 
moved towards London. 

And through his mind there raced a long procession of 
questions for which he could not find answers. His mind 
was an active, searching mind, but it was immature, and 
there were great gaps in it that could only be filled after a 
long time and much experience. He had not the knowl- 
edge which would enable him to combat the opinions of 
IVIarsh, but some instinct in him caused him to believe that 
Marsh’s views of England and Ireland were largely preju- 
diced views. “I don’t feel any less friendly to Gilbert 
and Ninian and Koger than I do to John Marsh or any 
other Irishman, and I don’t feel that John understands 
me better than they do!” That was the pivot on which 
all his opinions turned. He could only argue from his 
experience, and his experience was that this fundamental 
antagonism between the Irish and the English, on which 
John Marsh insisted, did not exist. When Marsh declared 
passionately that he did not wish to see Ireland made into 
a place like Lancashire, he was only stating something that 
many Englishmen said with equal passion about the unin- 
dustrialised parts of England. Gilbert Farlow denounced 
mill-owners with greater fury than Mr. Quinn denounced 
them. ... It seemed to Henry that he could name an 
English equivalent for every Irish friend he had. 

“There are differences, of course,” he said to himself, 
remembering the silent company of passengers who shared 
his compartment, “but they don’t matter very much!” 

“I wish,” he went on, “John Marsh weren’t so bitter 
against the English. Lots of them would like him if he’d 
only let them!” 

He looked out of the window at the wide fields and herds 
of cattle and comfortable farmhouses, built by men whose 
lives were more or less secure, and . . . “Of course!” he 
exclaimed in his mind. “That’s the secret of the whole 
thing ! When our people have had security for life as long 
as these people have had it, their houses will be as good as 


CHANGING WINDS 


141 


these are, and their farms as rich and clean and com- 
fortable ! ^ ' 

One had only to remember the history of Ireland to 
realise that many of the differences between the English 
and the Irish were no more than the differences between 
the hunter and the hunted, the persecutor and the perse- 
cuted. How could the Irish help having a lower standard 
of life than the English when their lives had been so dis- 
rupted and disturbed that it was difficult for them to have 
a standard of life at all? Now, when the disturbance was 
over and security of life had been obtained (after what 
misery and bitterness and cruel lack of common compre- 
hension!) the Irish would soon set up a level of life that 
might ultimately be higher than that of the English. 

“Of course,” said Henry, remembering something that 
his father had said, “there’ll be a Greedy Interval!” 

The Greedy Interval, the first period of prosperity in 
Ireland when the peasants, coming suddenly from inse- 
curity and poverty to safety and well-being, would claw at 
money like hungry beasts clawing at food, had been the 
subject of many arguments between Mr. Quinn and John 
Marsh, Mr. Quinn maintaining that greed was the prin- 
cipal characteristic of a peasant nation, inherent in it, in- 
separable from it. 

“Look at the French,” he had said on one occasion. 
“By God, they buried their food in their back-gardens 
rather than let their hungry soldiers have it in the Franco- 
German War! Would an aristocrat have done that, John 
Marsh? They saw their own countrymen who had been 
fighting for them, starving, and they let them starve ! . . . ” 

It was the same everywhere. “I never pass a patch of 
allotments,” he said, “without thinkin’ that their mean, 
ugly, little look is just like a peasant’s mind, an’ begod I’m 
glad when I’m past them an’ can see wide lands again!” 
Peasants were greedy, narrow, unimaginative, lacking in 
public spirit. In France, in Belgium, in Holland and Rus- 
sia, in all of which countries Mr. Quinn had travelled 


CHANGING WINDS 


142 

much, there was a peasant spirit powerfully manifested, 
and almost invariably that manifestation was shown in a 
mean manner. 

“That’s what your wonderful Land Laws are going to 
do for Ireland!” Mr. Quinn had exclaimed scornfully. 
“WeVe to be thrown out of our land, an’ louts like Tom 
McCrum are to be put in our place! ...” 

Henry had sympathised with his father then, but he felt 
that the best of the argument was with John Marsh who 
had replied that the Irish landlords would never have been 
dispossessed of their land, if they had been worthy of it. 
“If they’d thought as much about their responsibilities as 
they thought about their rights, they’d still have their 
rights!” he said. 

“I suppose that’s so,” Henry said to himself, picking 
up a paper that he had bought in Liverpool and begin- 
ning to read. “I must talk to Gilbert about it!” 

4 

Ninian and Gilbert met him at Whiteombe station. As 
he stood on the little platform of the carriage, he could see 
that Mary was not with them, and he felt disappointed. 
She might have come, too ! . . . 

“Here he is,” he heard Gilbert shout to Ninian as the 
train drew up. “Hilloa, Quinny!” 

“Hilloa, Gilbert!” 

“Hop out quickly, will you!” 

He hopped out as quickly as he could and said “Hilloa!” 
to Ninian, who said “Hilloa!” and slapped his back and 
called him an old rotter. 

“Widger’ll take your luggage,” Gilbert said, taking con- 
trol of their movements as he always did. “Hang on to 
this, Widger,” he added, taking a handbag from Henry 
and throwing it into Widger ’s arms. “Show him the rest 
of your stuff, Quinny, and let’s hook off. We’re going to 
walk to Boveyhayne. You’ll need a stretch after sitting 


CHANGING WINDS 


143 


all that time, and Ninian^s getting disgustingly obese, so 
we make him run up and down the road over the cliff three 
times so ’s to thin him down ! . . . ” 

Funny ass!’^ said Ninian. 

^‘Mrs. Graham wanted Mary to come with us, but we 
wouldn’t let her. We’re tired of females, Ninian and I, 
and Mary ’s very f emaley at present. She ’s started to read 
poetry! . . .” 

‘ ‘ Out loud 1 ’ ’ Ninian growled. ‘‘I’m sick of people who 
read out loud to me. When Mary’s not spouting stuff 
about ‘love’ and ‘dove’ and ‘heaven above’ and that sort of 
rot, Gilbert’s reading his damn play to me!” 

“ I ’ll read it to you, Quinny ! ’ ’ Gilbert said, linking his 
arm in Henry’s. 

They had left the station, and were now walking along 
the unfinished road above the shingle. There was a heat 
haze hanging over the smooth blue sea, so that sky and 
water merged into each other imperceptibly. In front of 
them, they could see the white cliffs of Boveyhayne shining 
in the descending sun. There were great stalks of char- 
lock, standing out of the grass on the face of the cliffs, 
giving them a golden head. 

“If Marley’s on Whitcombe beach, we’ll row over to 
Boveyhayne,” said Ninian. “You’d like to get on to the 
sea, wouldn’t you, Quinny?” 

Henry nodded his head. 

“No,” said Gilbert, “we won’t. We’ll sit here for a 
while, and I’ll read my play to Quinny. I carry it about 
with me, Quinny, so that I can read it to Ninian whenever 
his spirits are low!” 

‘ ‘ I never saw such a chap ! ’ ’ Ninian mumbled. 

“This great, hairy, beefy fellow,” Gilbert went on, seiz- 
ing hold of Ninian ’s arm with his disengaged hand, “does 
not love literature! ...” 

Ninian broke free from Gilbert’s grip. “Marley is on 
the beach,” he said, and ran ahead to engage the boat. 

.“Well, Quinny!” said Gilbert, when Ninian had gone. 


lU 


CHANGING WINDS 


“ Well, Gilbert!” Henry replied. 

“How’s Ireland? Still making an ass of itself?” 

Henry made no answer to Gilbert’s question because be 
knew that an answer was not expected. Had any one else 
spoken in that fashion to him, any other Englishman, he 
would probably have angered instantly, but Gilbert was 
different from all other people in Henry’s eyes, and was 
privileged to say whatever he pleased. 

“Gilbert,” he said, “I want to have a long jaw with you 
about something! ...” 

The English way of speaking came naturally to him, 
and he said “a long jaw about something” as easily as if 
he had never been outside an English public school. 

“What?” Gilbert said. 

^ ‘ Oh, everything. Ireland and things ! ’ ’ 

“All right, my son!” 

“You see ! . . .” 

“Wait though,” said Gilbert, “until we catch up with 
Ninian. He ought to hear it, too. He has a wise old 
noddle, Ninian, although he’s such a fat ’un. . . . My God, 
Quinny, isn’t he getting big? If he piles up any more 
muscle, he’ll have to go to Trinity Hall and join the beefy 
brutes and get drunk and all that kind of manly thing!” 
They came up with Ninian as he spoke. “Won’t you, 
Ninian?” 

“Won’t I what?” Ninian replied. 

“Have to go to Trinity Hall if you go on being a beefy 
Briton. Hilloa, Marley!” 

“Good-evenin’, sir!” said old Marley. 

They got into the boat, and Ninian rowed them round the 
white cliff to Boveyhayne beach, where they left the boat 
and walked up the village street to the lane that led to 
Boveyhayne Manor. 

“Henry wants to talk about the world, Ninian!” said 
Gilbert as they left the beach. “We’d better have a good 
old gabble after dinner to-night, hadn’t we?” 

“It doesn’t matter what I say,” said Ninian, “you’ll 


CHANGING WINDS 


115 


gabble anyhow. Anything to keep him from reading his 
blooming play to me ! ’ ’ he added, turning to Henry. 

5 

He had a sense of disappointment when he met Mary. 
In his reaction from Sheila Morgan, he had imagined Mary 
coming to greet him with something of the alert youth- 
fulness with which she had met him when he first visited 
Boveyhayne, but when she came into the hall, a book in 
her hand, he felt that there was some stiffness in her man- 
ner, a self-consciousness which had not been there before. 

‘ ‘ How do you do ? ^ ^ she said, offering her hand to him 
like any well-bred girl. 

She did not call him ‘^Quinny’’ or show in her manner 
or speech that he was particularly welcome to her. 

suppose,’’ he thought to himself, ‘‘she’s cross because 
I didn’t answer her letter!” 

He resolved that he would bring her back to her old 
friendliness. . . . 

“I expect you’re tired,” she said. “We’ll have tea in 
a minute or two. Mother’s lying down. She’s not very 
well!” 

She would have said as much to a casual acquaintance, 
Henry thought. 

‘ ‘ Not well 1 ” he heard Ninian saying. ‘ ‘ What ’s the mat- 
ter with her?” 

“She’s tired. I think she’s got a headache. There was 
a letter from Uncle Peter 1 ’ ’ Mary answered, and her tone 
indicated that the letter from Uncle Peter accounted for 
everything. 

“Oh!” said Ninian, scowling and turning away. 

They went into the drawing-room to tea, and Henry had 
a sense of intruding on family affairs, mingled with his 
disappointment because Mary was not as he had expected 
her to be. It might be, of course, that the letter from 
Uncle Peter had affected Mary almost as much as it seemed 


146 


CHANGING WINDS 


to have affected Mrs. Graham, and that presently she would 
be as natural as she had been that other time . . . but 
then he remembered that Gilbert had said that she was 
‘‘being very femaley at present.’’ She poured out tea for 
them as if she were a new governess, and she reproved 
Ninian once for saying “Damn!” when he dropped his 
bread and butter. . . . 

“Mary’s turned pi!” said Ninian. 

She frowned at him and told him not to be silly. 

“She calls the Communion Service the Eucharist, and 
crosses herself and flops and bows ! . . . ” 

“You’re very absurd, Ninian!” she said. 

Almost unconsciously, he began to compare her to Sheila 
Morgan. He remembered the free, natural ways of Sheila, 
and liked them better than these new, mannered ways of 
Mary. How could any one prefer this stiltedness to that 
ease, this self-consciousness to that state of being unaware 
of self? ... In Belfast, when he had left John Marsh, and 
in his loneliness had thought of the way Sheila had hu- 
miliated him, he had had a sharp sense of revulsion from 
her, a loathing for her, a desire never to see her again ; but 
now, sitting here looking at Mary and oppressed by her 
youngladyishness, his longing for Sheila came back to him 
with greater strength, and he resolved that he would write 
to her that night and beg her to forgive him for his cow- 
ardice and let him be her sweetheart again. . . . 

“Will you have some more tea?” Mary was saying to 
him, and he started at the sound of her voice. 

‘ ‘ Oh, thanks ! ” he said, passing his cup to her. 

“Thinking, Quinny?” Gilbert exclaimed, reaching for a 
bun. 

“Eh? Oh, yes! I was thinking!” he answered. 
“What time does the evening post go out?” he said to 
Ninian. 

“ Six-twenty-flve, ” Ninian answered. 

“Thanks. I just want to write to Ireland! ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


147 


“It’ll get there just as soon if you post it to-morrow,” 
said Gilbert. 

Mary left them. “I’m going up to mother,” she said, 
as she got up from the tea table. ‘ ^ She ’s awfully sorry she 
couldn’t be down to welcome you,” she added to Henry 
who had moved to open the door for her. » 

“I hope she’ll soon be better,” he answered. 

When she had gone, Ninian got up and cursed lustily. 

“Damn and blast him,” he said. 

They did not speak. They knew that Ninian ’s anger 
had some relation to Mrs. Graham’s headache and the 
letter from Uncle Peter, and they felt that it was not 
their business to speak, even though Ninian had drawn 
them into the affair. 

“I’m sorry,” said Ninian, sitting down again. “I 
ought not to have broken out like that before you chaps, but 
I couldn’t help it.” 

Henry coughed as if he were clearing his throat, but 
he did not speak, and Gilbert sat still and gazed at the toe 
of his shoe. 

‘ ‘ He always upsets mother, damn him ! ’ ’ Ninian looked 
up at them. “My Uncle Peter married a girl in a con- 
fectioner’s shop at Cambridge. He’s that kind of ass! 
He never writes to mother except when he’s in a mess, and 
he always expects her to get him out of it. I can’t stand 
a man who does that sort of thing. She’s an awful bitch, 
too . . . his wife! We had them here once! . . . My 
God!” 

Ninian lay back in his seat and remained silent for a 
while as if he were contemplating in his mind the picture 
of Uncle Peter and his wife on that awful visit to Bovey- 
hayne. They waited for him to continue. 

“I used to feel ashamed to go into the village,” he said 
at last. ‘ ‘ The way she talked to the fishermen — one minute 
snubbing them, and the next, talking to them as if she 
were a servant-girl. They didn’t like it. Jim Rattenbury 


148 


CHANGING WINDS 


hated it, I know. She wasn’t one of us and she wasn’t one 
of them. A damned in-between, that ’s what she was. And 
Uncle Peter used to get drunk! ... I’m awfully sorry, 
you chaps, I oughtn ’t to be boring you like this 1 ’ ’ 

“That’s all right,” said Gilbert. 

“I was jolly glad when they went,” Ninian went on. 
“Jolly glad 1 Poor mother had a hell of a time while they 
were here!” 

‘ ‘ I suppose so, ’ ’ Henry murmured, hardly knowing what 
to say. 

“I can’t understand a man marrying a woman like 
that,” Ninian said. “I mean, I can understand a fellow 
ragging about with a girl, but I can’t understand him mar- 
rying her and . . . and upsetting things!” 

It was on the tip of Henry’s tongue to say something 
about Ninian ’s belief in democracy, for he remembered 
that Gilbert, in one of his letters, had declared that Ninian 
had become a I’m-as-good-as-you-and-a-damn-sight-better- 
politician, but he did not say it. 

‘ ‘ The girl isn’t happy. Anybody can see she isn’t happy, 
and Uncle Peter isn’t happy, and between them they make 
us damn miserable. That kind of marriage is bound to 
fail, 1 think. People ought to marry in their own 
class! . . 

“Unless they’re big enough to climb out of it,” said 
Gilbert. 

“/Sf/ie isn’t!” 

It came to Henry suddenly that he was proposing to do 
what Ninian ’s Uncle Peter had done: marry a' girl who 
was not of his class. He listened to Ninian and Gilbert as 
they talked of this intimate mingling of classes, and won- 
dered what they would say if they knew of Sheila. Gil- 
bert and Ninian were agreed that on the whole it was 
foolish for a man to marry that kind of girl. “It doesn’t 
work, ’ ’ said Gilbert, and he told a story of a man whom his 
father had known, an officer in the Indian army who de- 


CHANGING WINDS 149 

veloped communist beliefs when he retired and had mar- 
ried his cook. ‘‘It^s a ghastly failure/’ said Gilbert. 

‘H’m all for equality/’ Ninian said, '‘but it’s silly to 
think that we’re always equal now. We’re not! . . /’ 

“And never will be,” Gilbert interjected. 

“I don’t agree with you, Gilbert. I think that things 
like habits and manners can be fairly equalised! ...” 

“Minds can’t!” 

“No, of course not, but decent behaviour can, and it’s 
silly to start mingling classes until you’ve done that. 
You rub each other the wrong way over little things that 
don’t really matter, but that irritate like blazes. I’ve 
talked about it with mother. She used to think I was the 
sort of chap who’d do what Uncle Peter did. Uncle Peter 
frightened me off that kind of thing!” 

It was absurd, Henry thought, to think that all women 
were like Uncle Peter’s wife. Sheila was not that sort of 
girl at all. She would not make a man feel ashamed ! . . . 

He broke off in the middle of his thoughts to listen to 
Gilbert who was enunciating a doctrine that was new to 
Henry. 

“There are aristocrats and there are plebs,” said Gilbert, 
“and they won’t mingle. That’s all about it. I believe 
that the majority of the working people are different from 
us, not only in their habits . . . that’s nothing . . . just 
the veneer . . . but in their nature. We’ve been achieved 
somehow . . . evolution and that sort of thing . . . because 
they needed people to look after them and direct them and 
control them. We’re as different from working people as 
a race-horse is from a cart-horse. Things that are quite 
natural to us are simply finicky fussy things to them. I 
wish to God talking like this didn’t make a fellow feel like 
a prig! ...” 

He broke off almost augrily. 

“Let’s go out,” he said. “I want to smoke!” 

“But it’s true all the same,” he went on when they got 


150 


CHANGING WINDS 


outside, almost as if he had not broken his speech. 
“Whether we tried for it or not, weVe got people sepa- 
rated into groups, and well never get them out of them. 
Some of us are servants and some of us are bosses, and 
we’ve developed natures like that, and we can’t get away 
from them!” Henry reminded them of men who had 
climbed from low positions to high positions. “They’re 
the accidents,” Gilbert went on. “They prove nothing, 
and I’m certain that if you could go back into their an- 
cestry, you’d find they sprang from people like us, who 
had somehow slithered down until the breed told and a 
turn up was taken! . . 

They argued round and round the subject, admitting 
here, denying there. ... 

“Anyhow,” Gilbert ended, “it is true that a man who 
marries a village girl makes a mistake, isn’t it?” 

“Not always,” Henry replied. 

“Nearly always,” said Gilbert. 

“Uncle Peter made a mistake anyhow,” Ninian said. 

6 

He went to his room, pleading that he was tired, to 
write his letter to Sheila before dinner. As he was going 
upstairs, Mary began to descend, and he saw that her look 
was brighter. 

“Go back,” she called to him, waving her hand as if to 
thrust him down the stairs again. “It’s unlucky to pass 
people on the stairs. Don’t you know that?” 

He descended again as she bade him, laughing as he did 
so, and waited until she had come down. 

“ Mother’s much better now,” she said when she had 
reached his side. “She’s coming down to dinner.” 

“I’m awfully glad,” he replied. He hesitated for a 
second or two, standing with one foot on the last step of 
the stairs. “I say, Mary,” he said. 

^‘Yes, Quinny!” she answered, turning to him. 


CHANGING WINDS 151 

So she had not forgotten that she had called him by his 
nick-name. 

“I say, Mary/^ he said again, still undecided as to 
whether he should speak his mind or not. 

^^Yes?’^ she repeated. 

He went up a step or two of the stairs. ‘^Oh, I don’t 
know,” he exclaimed. “I only wanted to say how nice 
it is to be here again!” 

'‘Oh, yes!” Mary said, and he imagined that her tone 
was one of disappointment. 

“I’ll be down presently,” he went on, and then he ran 
up the stairs to his room. 

“I don’t know,” he said to himself, as he closed his 
door. “I’m damned if I know ! ’ ’ 

He sat down at the writing-table and spread a sheet of 
notepaper in front of him. “I wish I knew! . . .” he 
murmured, and he wrote down the date. “Mary is awfully 
nice, and I like her of course, but Sheila! ...” 

He put the pen down again and sat back in his chair 
and stared out of the window. Out in the farmyard, he 
could hear the men bedding the horses, and there was a 
clatter of cans from the dairy where the women were 
turning the milk into cream. He could hear a horse whin- 
nying in its stall . . . and as he listened he seemed to see 
Sheila, as he had seen her on her uncle’s farm before he 
had failed in courage, standing outside the byre with a 
crock in her hands and a queer, teasing look in her eyes. 
“You’re the quare wee fella!” she was saying, and then, 
“I like you quaren well! ...” 

He seized the pen again and began to write. 

7 

He had almost finished the letter when Gilbert knocked 
on his door and shouted, “Can I come in, Quinny?” 

He put the letter under the blotting paper, and called, 
“Yes, Gilbert!” in reply. 


152 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Aren’t you ready yet?” Gilbert asked. 

“No, not yet, but I won’t be long changing!” 

“Righto!” said Gilbert, going to the other window and 
looking across the fields. “Rum go about Ninian’s uncle, 
isn’t it?” he said, playing with the tassle of the blind. 

“Eh?” said Henry. 

“There must be something low in a man who marries a 
woman like that, don’t you think?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. Why should there be?” 

“Obvious, isn’t it? I mean, there can’t be much in 
common otherwise, can there? Unless the man’s a senti- 
mental ass. It’s as if you or I were to marry one of the 
girls out there in the yard, milking the cows. She’d be 
awfully useful for that job . . . milking cows . . . but 
you wouldn’t want her to be doing it all the time. It de- 
pends, I suppose, on what you want to do. If you’ve got 
any ambition! ...” 

He did not finish the sentence, but Henry understood 
and nodded his head as if he agreed with him. 

“I must trot off,” Gilbert said suddenly, going towards 
the door. “I’m keeping you! ...” He paused with his 
fingers on the handle of the door. “I say, Quinny,” he 
said, “do you know anything about women?” 

“No, not much,” Henry answered. “Do you?” 

“No. Funny, isn’t it?” he replied, and then he went 
out of the room. 

Henry sat still for a moment, staring at the closed door, 
and then turned back to the writing-table and took the 
letter to Sheila from beneath the blotting-paper. He read 
it through and sat staring at it until the writing became 
a dancing blur. ... He got up, carrying the letter in his 
hand, and went to the door and opened it. He tried to 
call “Gilbert!” but the name came out in a whisper, and 
before he could call again, he heard the noise of laughter 
and then the sound of a young voice singing. Mary was 
downstairs, teasing Ninian. He could hear Ninian, half 


CHANGING WINDS 


153 


laughing, half growling, as he shouted, Don’t be an old 
ass, Mary!” 

He shut the door and went back to the writing-table, 
still holding the letter in his hand, and while he stood 
there, a gong was sounded in the hall. 

‘^Lord!” he said, “I shall have to hurry!” and he tore 
up the letter and put it in the waste-paper basket. 

8 

They passed their time in bathing and boating and 
walking, and sometimes Mary was with them, but mostly 
she was not. They went out in the mornings, soon after 
breakfast, taking food with them, and seldom returned 
until the evening. They took long tramps to Honiton 
and Lyme Regis and Sidmouth, and once they walked to 
Exeter and returned home by train. Mary liked boating 
and bathing, but she did not care for walking, and the 
distances they travelled were beyond her strength; and so 
it came about that gradually, during Henry’s stay at Bo- 
veyhayne, she ceased to take part in their outings. It 
seemed odd to him that she did not make any reference to 
their love-making. She called him “Quinny” and was 
friendly enough, but she called Gilbert by his Christian 
name and was as friendly with him as she was with Henry. 
He felt hurt when he thought of her indifference to him. 
“You’d think she’d forgotten about it!” he said to him- 
self one evening when he was sitting alone with her in the 
garden, and he oscillated between the desire to ignore 
her and the desire to have it out with her; but he dallied 
so long between one desire and the other that Gilbert and 
Ninian and Mrs. Graham had joined them before he had 
made a decision. He could not understand Mary. She 
seemed to have grown shy and quiet and much less de- 
monstrative than she had been when he first knew her. 

“Mary’s growing up,” Mrs. Graham said to him one 


154 


CHANGING WINDS 


evening, irrelevantly; and of course she was, but she had 
not grown up so much that there should be all this differ- 
ence between Mary now and Mary then. 

‘^Oh, well!” he generally concluded when his thoughts 
turned to her, “she's only a kid!” 

And sometimes that explanation seemed to satisfy him. 
There were other times when it failed to satisfy him, and 
he told himself that Mary was justly cold to him because 
he had not been loyal to their compact. He had not an- 
swered her letters and he had made love to Sheila Morgan. 
“I suppose,” he said to himself, “I’d be at Ballymartin 
now, making love to Sheila, if it hadn’t been for that 
horse!” 

He tried on several occasions to talk to Mary about 
her unanswered letter, to invent some explanation of his 
neglect, but always he failed to say anything, too nervous 
to begin, too afraid of being snubbed, too eager to leave the 
explanation over until the next day; and so he never “had 
it out” with her. 

“I am a fool!” he would say to himself in angry rebuke, 
but even while he was reproaching himself, his mind was 
devising an excuse for his behaviour. “We’re really too 
young,” he would add. “It’s silly of me to think of this 
sort of thing at all, and Mary’s still a schoolgirl! ...” 

“I’ll just say something to her before I go away,” he 
thought. “Something that will . . . explain everything!” 

Then Mr. Quinn wrote to him to say that he was in Lon- 
don on business. He was anxious that Henry should come 
to town so that they could return to Ireland together. 
“We’ll go to Dublin,” he wrote, “and I’ll leave you there. 
You needn’t come to Ballymartin until the end of the first 
term.” 

He felt strangely chilled by his father’s letter. This 
jolly holiday at Boveyhayne was to be the end of one life, 
and the journey to Dublin was to be the beginning of an- 
other ; and he did not wish to end the one life or begin the 


CHANGING WINDS 


155 


other. He could feel growing within him, an extraordi- 
nary hatred of Trinity College, and he almost wrote to his 
father to say that he would rather not go to a University 
at all than go to T.C.D. It was cruel, he told himself, 
to separate him from his friends and compel him to go to 
a college that meant nothing on earth to him. 

shanT know any one there,’’ he said to Gilbert and 
Ninian, ‘‘and I probably won’t want to know any one. 
It’s a hole, that’s what it is, a rotten hole. If the dons 
were any good, they’d be at Oxford or Cambridge! . . .” 

“You’re not much of a patriot,” Ninian said. 

“I don’t want to be a damned patriot. I want to be 
with people I like. I don’t see why I should be compelled 
to go and live with a lot of people I don’t know and don’t 
care about, just because I’m Irish and they’re Irish, when 
I really want to be with you and Gilbert and Roger. . . . 
I haven’t seen Roger since I left Rumpell’s and I don’t 
suppose I shall see him for a long time 1 ’ ’ 

Gilbert tried to mock him out of his anger. ‘ ‘ This emo- 
tion does you credit, young Quinny!” he said, “and we 
are touched, Ninian and I. Aren’t we, Ninian? But you 
must be a man, Quinny! Four years hence, we shall all 
meet in London, Deo volente, and we’ll be able to compare 
the education of Ireland with the education of England. 
Oh, Lordy God, I sometimes wish we hadn’t got minds at 
all. I think it must be lovely to be a cow . . . nothing to 
do but chew the damned cud all day. No soul to consider, 
no mind to improve, no anything! ...” 

Gilbert and he left Boveyhayne together, but Gilbert was 
only going as far as Templecombe with him, where he was 
to change on his way to Cheltenham. Ninian and Mary 
saw them off at Whitcombe, and when he remembered the 
circumstances in which she had seen him off before, Henry 
had a longing to take hold of her arm and lead her to the 
end of the platform, as he had done then, and tell her that 
he was sorry for everything and beg her to start again 


156 


CHANGING WINDS 


where they had left off that day . . . but Gilbert was there 
and Ninian was there, and there was no opportunity, and 
the train went off, leaving the explanation unmade. 

9 

‘^Good-bye, Quinny!” Gilbert said at Templecombe. 

‘‘Good-bye, Gilbert !’' Henry answered in a low tone. 

“I suppose you’ll write to me some day?” 

“I suppose so. Yes, of course! ...” 

“Ripping day, isn’t it? Shame to be wasting it in a 
blooming train!” 

“Yes!” 

He wished that the train would break down so that he 
need not part from Gilbert yet, but while he was wishing, 
it began to move. Gilbert stood back from the carriage and 
waved his hand to him, and Henry leant with his head 
through the window of his carriage, smiling. . . . 

“Damn Trinity,” he said, sitting back in his seat, and 
letting depression envelop him. “Damn and blast Trin- 
ity! . . .” 


THE SECOND BOOK 

OF 

CHANGING WINDS 


I write of Youth, of Love, and have Accesse 
By these, to sing of cleanly-Wantonnesse. 


Herrick. 


THE FIRST CHAPTER 


1 

Henry Quinn climbed into a carriage at Amiens Street 
station and sat back in his seat and puffed with pleasure, 
blowing out his breath with a long “poo-ing^’ sound. He 
was quit of Trinity College at last! Thank God, he was 
quit of it at last! The hatred with which he had entered 
Trinity had, in his four years of graduation, been mitigated 
. . . there were even times when he had kindly thoughts of 
Trinity . . . but every letter he received from Gilbert Far- 
low or Ninian Graham or Roger Carey stirred the resent- 
ment he felt at his separation from his friends who had 
gone to Cambridge, and so, in spite of the kindlier feeling 
he now had for the College, he was happy to think that he 
was quitting it for the last time. ‘‘But it isn’t Irish,” hq. 
insisted when his father complained of his lack of love for 
Trinity. “It’s ... it’s a hermaphrodite of a college, 
neither one thing nor another, English nor Irish. I always 
feel, when I step out of College Green into Trinity, that 
I’ve stepped right out of Ireland and landed on the point 
of a rock in the middle of the Irish Sea . . . and the point 
pricks and is damned uncomfortable!” 

“You’ve got the English habit of damning everything, 
Henry ! ’ ’ his father replied at a tangent. 

But Henry would not be drawn away from his argument. 

‘ ‘ The atmosphere of the place is all wrong, ’ ’ he went on. 
“The Provost looks down the side of his nose at you if he 
thinks you take an interest in Ireland ! ’ ’ 

Mr. Quinn, in his> eagerness to defend his College from 
reproaches which he knew to be deserved, reminded Henry 

159 


160 


CHANGING WINDS 


that the Provost had a considerable reputation as a Greek 
scholar, but his effort only delivered him more completely 
into Henry's hands. 

‘‘But, father," Henry said, “you yourself used to say 
what's the good of knowing all about Greece when you 
don't know anything about Ireland. I don't care about 
Greece and all those rotten little holes in the .^gean . . . 
that's dead and done with . . . but I do care about Ire- 
land which isn’t dead and done with!" 

It was then that Mr. Quinn found consolation. “Well, 
anyway, you 've learned to love Ireland, ' ' he said. ‘ ‘ Trin- 
ity 's done that much for you!". 

“Trinity hasn’t done it for me," Henry answered, “I 
did it for myself.” 

Lying back in his seat, waiting for the train to steam out 
of the station on its journey to Belfast, Henry remembered 
that conversation with his father, and his mind speculated 
freely on his attitude towards Trinity. “I don't care," he 
said, “if I never put my foot inside the gates again!" 

Something that Patrick Galway said to him once, when 
he and John Marsh were talking of Trinity, came back to 
his memory. “The College is living on Oliver Goldsmith 
and Edmund Burke," Galway said, and added^ “It’s like 
a maiden lady in a suburb giving herself airs because her 
great-grandfather knew somebody who was great. It 
hasn’t produced a man who’s done anything for Ireland, 
except harm, not in the last hundred years anyhow. Law- 
yers and parsons and officials, that's the best Trinity can 
do! If you think of the Irishmen who've done anything 
fine for Ireland, you'll find that, when they came from uni- 
versities at all, they came from Oxford or Cambridge, any- 
where on God’s earth but Trinity. Horace Plunkett was 
at Oxford. ..." 

“Eton, too!" Marsh had interjected. 

“Yes, Eton!" Galway went on. “Think of it! An 
Irish patriot coming from Eton where you'd think only 
Irish oppressors would come from ! If Plunkett had been 


CHANGING WINDS 


161 


educated in an Irish school and sent to Trinity, do you 
think he^d have done anything decent for Ireland?^’ 

‘‘Yes,^’ Henry had replied promptly. ^‘He’s that kind 
of man!” 

‘^No, he wouldn’t,” Galway retorted. ‘^They’d have 
educated the decency out of him, and he’d have been a . . . 
a sort of Lord Ashtown 1 ’ ’ 

But Henry would have none of that. He would not be- 
lieve that a man’s nature can be altered by pedagogues. 

‘‘Horace Plunkett would have been a good Irishman if 
he’d been born and reared and educated in an Orange 
Lodge,” he said. 

“I’m not talking about natures, ’ ’ Galway replied. “I’m 
talking about beliefs. They’d have told him it was no 
good trying to build up an Irish nation. ...” 

“He wouldn’t have believed them,” Henry retorted. 
‘ ‘ Damn it, Galway, do you think a man like Plunkett would 
let a lot of fiddling schoolmasters knock him off his bal- 
ance?” 

“I’m a schoolmaster,” Galway answered, “and I know 
what schoolmasters can do 1 ” His voice changed, deepen- 
ing, as he spoke. “I know what the young teachers in 
Ireland mean to do!” 

“What do they mean to do?” Henry had asked jokingly. 

“Make Irishmen,” Galway answered. 

“If only Trinity would make Irishmen,” he went on, 
“we’d all be saved a deal of trouble. But it won’t, and 
when a man of family, like Plunkett, is born with good will 
for Ireland, he has to go to England to be educated. And 
he ought to be educated in Ireland, and he would be if 
Trinity were worth a damn. I wish I were Provost, I’d 
teach Irishmen to be proud of their birth!” 

“Well, when we’ve made Ireland a nation,” said Henry, 
chaffing him, “we’ll make you Provost of Trinity!” and 
Galway, though he knew that Henry was jesting, smiled 
with pleasure. 

“When Ireland is a nation !” Marsh murmured dreamily. 


162 


CHANGING WINDS 


2 

It was extraordinary, Henry thought, how little at home 
he had felt in Dublin. He had the feel of Ballymartin 
in his bones. He had kinship with the people in Belfast. 
At Rumpeirs and at Boveyhayne he had had no sensation 
of alien origin. He had stepped into the life of the school 
as naturally as Gilbert Farlow had done, and at Bovey- 
hayne, even when he still had difficulty in catching the 
dialect of the fishermen, he had felt at home. But in Dub- 
lin, he had an uneasy feeling that after all, he was a 
stranger. In his first year at Trinity, he had been bru- 
tally contemptuous of the city and its inhabitants. ‘ ‘ They 
canT even put up the names of the streets so that people 
can read them,” he said to John Marsh soon after he ar- 
rived in Dublin. “TheyTe so damned incompetent!” 
And Marsh had told him to control his Ulster blood. 
“ You^re right to be proud of Ulster,” he had said, “but you 
oughtn’t to go about talking as if the rest of Ireland were 
inhabited by fools ! ’ ’ 

“I know I oughtn’t,” Henry replied, “but I can’t help 
it when I see the way these asses are letting Dublin down ! ’ ’ 

That was how he felt about Dublin and the Dublin peo- 
ple, that Dublin was being “let down” by her citizens. 
His first impression of the city was that it was noble, even 
beautiful, in spite of its untidiness, its distress. He would 
wander about the streets, gazing at the fine old Georgian 
houses, tumbling into decay, and feel so much anger against 
the indifferent citizens that sometimes he felt like hitting 
the first Dublin man he met . . . hitting him hard so that 
he should bleed! ...” 

“I feel as if Dublin were like an old mansion left by 
a drunken lord in the charge of a drunken caretaker,” he 
said to Marsh. “It’s horrible to see those beautiful houses 
decaying, but it’s more horrible to think that nobody 
cares ! ’ ’ 

Marsh had taken him one Sunday to a house where there 


CHANGING WINDS 16S 

were ceilings that were notable even in Dublin which is 
full of houses with beautiful ceilings. 

“ If we had houses like that in Belfast, ’ ’ Henry had said, 
as they came away, “we wouldn’t let them become slums!” 

“No,” retorted Marsh, unable to restrain himself from 
sneering, “you’d make peep-shows out of them and charge 
for admission!” 

“Well, that would be better than turning them into 
slums,” Henry answered good-humouredly. 

“Would it?” Marsh replied. 

Would Henry wondered. The train was now on 
its way to Belfast, and, looking idly out of the window, he 
could see the waves of the Irish Sea breaking on the sands 
at Malahide, heaving suddenly into a glassy-green heap, 
and then tumbling over into a sprawl of white foam. 
Would it ? he wondered, thinking again of what Marsh had 
said about the Georgian houses with their wide halls and 
lovely Adams ceilings. There was no beauty of building 
at all in Belfast, and no one there seemed anxious that 
there should be : in all that city, so full of energy and pur- 
pose and grit and acuteness of mind, there did not appear 
to be one man of power who cared for the fine shape or the 
good look of things ; but, after all, was that so very much 
worse than the state of mind of the Dublin people who, 
knowing what beauty is, carelessly let it decay ? He began 
to feel bitterly about Ireland and her indifference to cul- 
ture and beauty. He told himself that Ireland was the 
land of people who do not care. . . . 

“They’ve got to be made to care!” he said aloud. 

But how was it to be done? . . . 

His sense of being an alien in Dublin had persisted all 
the time that he had lived there. The Dublin people were 
gregarious and garrulous, and he was solitary and refiec- 
tive. Marsh and Galway had taken him to houses where 
people met and talked without stopping, and much con- 
versation with miscellaneous, casually-encountered people 
bored Henry. He had no gift for ready talk and he dis- 


164 


CHANGING WINDS 


liked crowds and he was unable to carry on a conversation 
with people whom he did not know, of whose very names 
he was ignorant. Sometimes, he had envied Marsh and 
Galway because of the ease with which they could con- 
verse with strangers. Marsh would talk about himself and 
his poems and his work with an innocent vanity that made 
people like him ; but Henry, self-conscious .and shy, could 
not talk of himself or his intentions to any but his inti- 
mates. Sitting here, in this carriage, from which, even 
now, he could see in the distance, veiled in clouds, the high 
peaks of the Mourne mountains, he tried to explain this 
difference between Marsh and himself. Why was it that 
these Dublin men were so lacking in reticence, so eager to 
communicate, while he and Ulstermen were reserved and 
eager to keep silent? He set his problem in those terms. 
He identified himself as a type of the Ulsterman, and be- 
gan to develop a theory, flattering to himself, to account 
for the difference between Dublin people and Ulstermen 
. . . until he remembered that Ernest Harper was an Ul- 
sterman. Mr. Quinn had taken Henry to see Harper on 
the first Sunday evening after they had arrived in Dublin 
from England, and Harper had received him very charm- 
ingly and had talked to him about nationality and co-op- 
eration and the Irish drama and the strange inability of 
Lady Gregory to understand that it was not she who had 
founded the Abbey Theatre, until Henry, who had never 
heard of Lady Gregory, began to feel tired. He had waited 
patiently for a chance to interpolate something into the 
monologue until hope began to leave him, and then, with 
a great effort he had interrupted the flow of Harper ’s vivid 
talk and had made a reference to a picture hanging on the 
wall beside him. It showed a flaming fairy in the middle 
of a dark wood. . . . 

“Oh, yes,” Harper said, “that’s the one I saw!” 

“You saw?” Henry had exclaimed in astonishment. 

And then he remembered that Harper spoke of fairies 
as intimately as other men speak of their friends. . . . 


CHANGING WINDS 


165 


‘^Good God!’’ he thought, where am If’^ and wondered 
what Ninian Graham would make of Ernest Harper. 

Harper was an Ulsterman, and so was George Russell, 
whom people called “A.E.” Marsh and Galway, now al- 
most inseparable, had taken Henry to hear George Russell 
speaking on some mystical subject at the Hermetic Club, 
and Henry, bewildered by the subject, had felt himself 
irresistibly attracted to the fiery-eyed man who spoke with 
so little consciousness of his audience. After the meet- 
ing was ended, he had walked part of the way home with 
Russell and had listened to him as he said the whole of his 
lecture over again . . . and he left him with a feeling that 
Russell was unaware of human presences, that the company 
of human beings was not necessary to him, that his speech 
was addressed, not to the visible audience or the visible com- 
panion, but to an audience or a companion that no one but 
himself could see. Was there any one on earth less like 
the typical Ulsterman than George Russell, who preached 
mysticism and better business, or Ernest Harper who took 
penny tramrides to pay visits to the fairies? 

No, this theory of some inherent difference between 
Ulstermen and other Irishmen would not work. There must 
be some other explanation of Henry’s dislike of crowds, his 
silence in large companies, his inability to assert himself 
in the presence of strangers. Why was it that he was un- 
able to talk about himself and the things he had done and 
the things he meant to do as Marsh talked? It was not 
because he was more modest, had more humility, than 
Marsh; for in his heart, Henry was vain. . . . And while 
he was asking himself this question, suddenly he found the 
answer. It was because he was afraid to talk about him- 
self, it was because he had not got the courage to be vain 
and self-assertive in crowds. His inability to talk among 
strangers, to make people cease their own conversation in 
order to listen to him, was part of that cowardice that had 
prevented him from diving into the sea when he went with 
his father to swim at Cushendall and had sent him shiver- 


166 


CHANGING WINDS 


ing into the shelter of the hedge when the runaway horse 
came galloping down the Ballymena road. . . . 

This swift, lightning revelation made him stand up in 
the carriage and gape at the photographs of Irish scenery 
in front of him. 

‘‘Oh, my God!’^ he said to himself, “am I always to be 
tortured like thisT^ 


4 

He sat back in his seat and lay against the cushions 
without moving. He saw himself now very clearly, for 
he had the power to see himself with the closest fidelity. 
He knew now that all his explanations were excuses, that 
the bitter things he had sometimes said of those who had 
qualities which he had not, were invented to prevent him 
from admitting that he was without courage. Any fight, 
mental or physical, unnerved him when it brought him into 
personal contact with his opponents. He could write 
wounding things to a man, but he could not say them to 
him without losing possession of himself and his tongue; 
and so he passed from the temper of a cool antagonist to 
that of an enraged shrew. He had tried to explain the 
garrulity of the Dublin people by saying that they were 
obliged to talk and to persist in talking because ‘ ‘ otherwise 
they ’d start to think ! ’ ’ but he knew now that that was not 
an accurate explanation, that it was an ill-natured attempt 
to coyer up his own lack of force. 

“And that’s worse than cowardice,” he said to him- 
self, “to excuse my own funkiness by pretending that cour- 
age isn’t courage!” 

He remembered that he had invented a bitter phrase 
about Yeats one night when he had seen the poet in a house 
in Dublin. “Yeats is behaving as if he were the arch- 
angel Gabriel making the Annunciation!” he had said, and 
the man to whom he had said it had laughed and asked 
what Henry thought Yeats was announcing. 


CHANGING WINDS 


167 


‘‘A fresh revision of one of his lyrics/’ he had re- 
plied. . . . 

^‘And I’d give the world,” he said now, ‘Ho be able to 
put on his pontifical air ! ” 

He had a shrinking will; his instinct in an emergency 
was to back away from things. He had not got the ca- 
pacity to compel men to do his bidding by the simple force 
of his personality. If he succeeded in persuading people 
to do things which he suggested to them he was only able 
to do so after prolonged discussion, sometimes only after 
everything else had failed. At Rumpell’s, Gilbert had 
made suggestions as if they were commands that must 
instantly be obeyed . . . and they had been instantly 
obeyed; but when Henry made suggestions, either people 
did not listen t'> them or, having listened to them, they 
acted on some other suggestion, until at last, Henry, dis- 
heartened, seldom proposed anything until the last moment, 
and then he made his proposal in a way which seemed to 
indicate that he thought little of it ; and when some of his 
suggestions were accepted and had proved, in practice, to 
be good, his attitude had been, not that of the man who is 
absolutely sure of himself, but rather of the man who 
gasps with relief because something that he thought was 
very likely to be a failure, had proved to be a success. 

Depression settled on him so heavily that he began to 
believe that he was bound to fail in everything that he 
undertook to do, and when he thought of the bundle of 
manuscript in his portmanteau, he had a sudden inclina- 
tion to take it out and fling it through the window of the 
carriage. He had not spoken of his writing to any one 
except John Marsh, and to him, he had only said that he 
intended to write a novel some day. Once, indeed, he had 
said, “I’ve written quite a lot of that novel I told you 
about ! ’ ’ but Marsh, intent on something else, had answered 
vaguely, “Oh, yes!” and had changed the conversation, 
leaving Henry to imagine that he had little faith in his 
power to write. He had been so despondent after that. 


168 


CHANGING WINDS 


that he had gone back to College and, having re-read what 
he had written, had torn the manuscript in pieces and 
thrown it into the grate because it seemed so dull and 
tasteless. He had not written a word after that for more 
than a month, and he might not have written anything for 
a longer period had he not heard from Gilbert Farlow that 
he had finished a comedy in three acts and had sent it to 
Mr. Alexander. The news stimulated him, and in a little 
while he was itching to wrife again. In the evening, he 
began to re-write the story and thereafter it went on, some- 
times quickly, sometimes slowly, until it was finished. His 
feelings about it changed with remarkable rapidity. He 
read it over, in its unfinished state, many times, feeling 
at one time it was excellent, and at another time that it 
was poor, flatulent stuff, without colour or vivacity. 

Writing did not give pleasure to him: it gave him pain. 
He felt none of that exultation in creating characters which 
he had been told was part of the pleasures of an author. 
There were times, indeed, when he felt a mitigated joy in 
writing because his ideas were fluent and words fell easily 
off his pen, but even on those occasions, the labour of writ- 
ing hurt him and exhausted him. The times of pleasurable 
writing were short interludes between the long stretches of 
painful writing, little oases that made the journey across 
the desert just possible. And then there were those periods 
of appalling misery when, having ended a chapter, he won- 
dered what he should make his people do next. He would 
leave them, landed neatly at the end of some adventure or 
emotional crisis, feeling that the story was going on splen- 
didly and that his power to write was full and strong, and 
then, having written the number of the next chapter, he 
would reach forward to write the first word . . . and sud- 
denly there was devastation in his mind, and “My God! 
I don’t know what to make them do now!” he would say. 

He had read in a literary journal that some authors 
planned their stories before they began to write them. 
They prepared a summary of the tale, and then enlarged 


CHANGING WINDS 


169 


the summary. They knew exactly what was to happen in 
each chapter. A character could not move or rise or sit 
down or turn pale or look pleased without the author hav- 
ing known about it long before the act was performed. 
It was as if the author could count the very hairs on the 
heads of his people. “Just like God! Henry had said to 
himself when he had finished reading the article. ... He 
had tried to make a plan, and, after much labour, had 
completed one ; but it was useless to him, for when he came 
to write out the story, his characters kicked it aside and 
insisted on behaving in some other way than he had planned 
that they should behave. It was as if they had taken their 
destinies into their own hands and insisted on living their 
lives in accordance with their own wishes instead of living 
them in accordance with his. ... It was fortunate then 
that he began to read “Tristram Shandy,’’ for when he saw 
how Sterne’s pen, refusing to obey him, had filled some of 
his pages with curly lines and dots and confusions, had even 
declined to fill a chapter at all, impudently skipping it, 
he realised that authors are but creatures in the hands of 
some force that wills them to create things which they can- 
not control and sometimes cannot understand. 

Writing his book had given him one pleasure. On the 
day on which he wrote the last word of it, he felt joy. 
Before he began to write, he had read in Forster ’s ‘ ‘ Life of 
Dickens” that the great novelist had parted from his char- 
acters with pain. Henry parted from his characters with 
pleasure. “Thank God,” he said, as he put down his pen, 
“I’ve finished with the brutes 1” 

He had enjoyed reading the story in its finished state, 
and when he had packed the manuscript into his port- 
manteau, he had felt that the story was good, and had sat 
in a chair dreaming of the success it would make and the 
praise he would receive for it. He tried to calculate the 
number of copies that would be sold, basing his calculations 
on the total population of the British Isles. “There are 
over forty millions of people in England and Wales alone,” 


170 


CHANGING WINDS 


he said to himself, ‘‘and another ten millions, say, in Scot- 
land and Ireland . . . about fifty millions in all. I ought 
to sell a good many copies . . . and then there’s America!” 
He thought that ten per cent, of the population might buy 
the story, and believed that his estimate was modest until 
he remembered that ten per cent, of fifty millions is five 
millions! . . . 

And that made him laugh. Even he, in his wildest imag- 
inings, did not dream of selling five million copies of his 
novel. 


5 

He wished now that he had asked John Marsh and Pat- 
rick Galway to read the story and tell him what they 
thought of it. They were honest men, and would criticise 
his work frankly. At that moment, he had an insatiable 
longing to know the truth, mingled with a strange fear of 
knowing it. What he wished to know was whether or not 
he had the potentialities of a great author in him. He 
knew that his story was not commonplace stuff, but he was 
afraid that it might only be middling writing, and he did 
not wish to be a middling writer. If he could not be a 
great writer, he did not wish to be a writer at all. There 
were thousands and thousands of novels in the world which 
did no more for men than enable them to put their minds 
to sleep. Henry did not wish to add a book to their num- 
ber. There were other books, fewer in number than those, 
which showed that their authors had some feeling for life, 
but not enough, and these authors went on, year after 
year, producing one or more novels, each of which ‘ ‘ showed 
promise,” but never showed achievement. The life these 
men pursued always eluded them. It was impossible for 
Henry to join the crowd of people who produced books 
which perished with the generation that they pleased. 
That much he knew. But he was eager that he should not 
fall into the ranks of the semi-great, the half-clever; and 
his fear was that his place was in their midst. 


CHANGING WINDS 


171 


While he was ruminating in this manner, he remembered 
that Gilbert Farlow had written to him a few days before 
he left Dublin, and he ceased to think of his career as a 
writer and began to search his pockets for Gilbert’s letter. 

‘H’ll show the manuscript to Gilbert,” he said to him- 
self. ^ ^ Old Gilbert loves telling people the truth ! ’ ’ 

He found the letter and began to read it. ^^Quinny” 
it began, for Gilbert had abandoned ^‘dears’’ because, he 
said, he sometimes had to write to people who were de- 
testable : 

*^Quinny: How soon can you get quit of that barrack 
in Dublin where your misguided father thinks 'you are be- 
ing taught to be Irish? Cast your eyes on the address at 
the head of this notepaper. It is a noble house that Roger 
and I have discovered. Ninian has seen it and he approves 
of it. I said I’d break his blighted neck for him if he dis- 
approved of it, which may have had something to do with 
his decision f though not much, for Ninian has become a 
very muscular young fellow and I shouldn’t have liked the 
fob of breaking his neck very much. Roger and I have 
been here for a week now, and Ninian joins us at the end 
of the month. He’s down at Boveyhayne at present, catch- 
ing lobsters and sniffing the air, all of which he says is very 
good for him and would be better for me. And you. And 
Roger. There is a tablet on the front wall of the house, 
fixed by the London County Council, which says that Lord 
Thingamabob used to live here sometime in the eighteenth 
century. The landlord tried to raise the rent on that 
account, but we said we were Socialists and would expect 
the rent to be decreased because of the injury to our prin- 
ciples caused by residence in a house that had been inhab- 
ited by a member of the cursed, bloated and effete aristoc- 
racy. He begged our pardon and said that in the circum- 
stances, he wouldn’t charge anything extra, but he had us 
in the end, the mouldy worm, for he said that it was the 
custom to make Socialists pay a quarter’s rent in advance. 


172 


CHANGING WINDS 


The result was that Roger had to stump up ... I couldnH 
for I was broke . . . which made dear little Roger awfully 
unpleasant to live with for a whole day. I offered to go 
hack and tell the man that we weren’t Socialists at all, hut 
Improved Tories, hut he said I’d done enough harm. It’s 
a pity that old Roger hasn’t got a better sense of humour. 

We have chosen two rooms for you, one to work in, and 
the other to sleep in. We’re each to have two rooms, so 
that we can go and he morose in comfort if we want to; 
hut I daresay in the evenings we’ll want to he together. 
I’ve thought out a scheme of decoration for your room — 
all pink rosebuds and stuff like that. Roger asked me not 
to he an ass when I told him of it. His notion is a nice 
quiet distemper. Perhaps you’d better see to the decora- 
tion yourself although I must say I always thought your 
taste was perfectly damnable. 

By-the-way, there’s a ghost in this house. It’s supposed 
to he the ghost of Lord Thingamahoh, and I believe it is. 
I saw it myself three nights ago, and it was as drunk as a 
fiddler. My God, Quinny, it’s a terrible thing to see an 
intoxicated spook. Roger wouldn’t believe me when I told 
him about it afterwards. He said I was drunk myself and 
that he heard me tumbling up the stairs to bed. Which 
is a lie. I did see it, and it was drunk. I heard it hic- 
cough! I wouldn’t say it was drunk if it wasn’t. Be 
mortuis nil nisi bonum, Quinny, and it would be a very 
dirty trick to slander a poor bogey that can’t defend it- 
self. It looked very like its descendant. Lord Middle- 
weight, and it had the same soppy grin that he has when 
he thinks he’s said something clever. Damned ass, that 
chap! 

Alexander sent my comedy back. He sent a note along 
with it and told me what a clever lad I am and more or 
less hinted that when I’ve grown up, I can send him an- 
other play. I suppose he thinks I’m a kid in knicker- 
bockers. The result of this business is that I’m going to 
try and get a job as a dramatic critic. If I do, God help 


CHANGING WINDS 


173 


the next play he produces. I^m a hurt man, and 1 shall 
let the world know about it. I^m half-way through an- 
other piece which will take some place hy storm, 1 hope. 
It’s a very bright play, much better than the muck Oscar 
Wilde wrote, not so melodramatic, and tons better than 
anything Bernard Shaw has written. It’s all about me. 

We’ve got an old woman called Clutters to housekeep 
for us. 1 chose her on account of her name, and it is a 
piece of good luck that she cooks extraordinarily well. 
There is also a maid, but we don’t know her name, so we 
call her Magnolia. I’m really writing all this rot to get 
myself into the ‘^twitter-twitter” mood. One of the char- 
acters in my new comedy talks like a character in a book 
by E. F. Benson, and I have to work myself up into a state 
of babbling fatuity before I can write her lines for her. 

Come to London as soon as you can. 

Gilbert. 


6 

The prospect of settling in London in the society of his 
schoolfriends pleased him. Marsh and Galway had tried 
to persuade him to make his home in Dublin, pleading that 
it was the duty of every educated Irishman to live in Ire- 
land. “We haven’t got many educated men on our side,” 
Marsh said, “not a hundred in the whole of Ireland, and 
we need people like you ! ’ ’ They talked of political schemes 
that must be prepared for the parliament that would some 
day be re-established in College Green. “And they can 
only be prepared by educated men,” Marsh said. 

Henry would not listen to them. His longing was to be 
with Gilbert and Roger and Ninian in London. Dublin 
made very little appeal to him, and the job of regenerating 
Ireland was so immense that it frightened him. ‘ ‘ I haven ’t 
got a common ground with you people,” he said to Marsh 
and Galway. “You’re Catholic to start off with, and I’m 
like my father, I think the Catholic religion is a eontempti- 


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CHANGING WINDS 


ble religion. And you^re not interested in anything but 
Ireland and the Gaelic movement. I ’m interested in every- 
thing!’’ 

“Don’t you want to do anything for Ireland then?” 
John Marsh had asked. 

‘ ‘ Oh, yes I I ’ll vote for Home Rule when I get a vote, ’ ’ 
he had replied. 

‘ ‘ I know what your end will be, ’ ’ Patrick Galway added 
in a sullen voice. “You’ll become a Chelsea Nationalist 
. . . willing to do anything for Ireland but live in it 1 ” 

Well, who would want to live in Ireland with its penny- 
farthing politics I London for him 1 London and a sense 
of bigness, of wide ideas and the constant interplay of 
many minds! 

He would talk to his father about Gilbert’s proposal. 
There would be all sorts of subjects to discuss with him, 
that and the question of an allowance and the question of 
a career. . . . 

The train ran swiftly through the suburbs of Belfast and 
presently pulled up at the terminus. He descended from 
his carriage and called a jarvey who drove him across the 
city to the Northern Counties station where he took train 
again. It was late that night when he arrived at Bally- 
martin. 


THE SECOND CHAPTER 


1 

Mr. Quinn had become more absorbed in the Irish Agri- 
cultural Co-Operative Movement, and he used the home 
farm for experiments in scientific cultivation. His talk, 
when Henry returned home, was mainly about a theory of 
tillage which he called “continuous cropping,” and it was 
with difficulty that Henry could persuade him to talk about 
Gilbert’s proposal that he should join the household in 
Bloomsbury. 

“I’m glad you’ve come home, Henry,” he said after 
breakfast on the morning following Henry ’s return. ‘ ‘ This 
system of continuous cropping is splendid, but it wants 
careful attention. You’ve got to adjust it continually to 
circumstances . . . you can’t follow any rules about it . . . 
and if you’ll just stay here and help me with it, we’ll be 
able to do wonders with the home farm!” 

Henry did not wish to settle in Ballymartin, at all events 
not for a long time. 

“I want to go to London, father!” he said. 

^ ‘ Londoii ! What for ? ’ ’ Mr. Quinn exclaimed, and then 
before Henry could say why he wished to go to London, 
he added, “You’ll have to settle on something, Henry. I 
always meant you to take over the estate fairly soon, to 
work things out with me. Don ’t you want to do that ? ’ ’ 

‘ ^ Not particularly, father ! ’ ’ 

“Well, what’s to become of you, then? Do you want to 
go into the Army ? It ’s a bit late ! . . . ” 

“No, father!” 

“Or the Navy? But you should have gone to Osborne 
long ago if you wanted to do that ! ’ ’ 

175 


176 


CHANGING WINDS 


Henry shook his head. 

“Well, what do you want to do. Are you thinkin’ of 
the law?” 

“I don’t care about the law, father! ...” 

“I don’t care about it myself, Henry. I was no good at 
it, an’ mebbe that’s the reason I think so little of it. But 
we have to have lawyers all the same It would be a good 
plan now to sentence criminals to be lawyers, wouldn’t it? 
‘The sentence of the Court is that you be taken from this 
place an’ made to practise at the Bar for the rest of your 
natural life, an’ may the Lord have mercy on your soul!’ 
Begod, Henry, that’s a great notion!” 

Henry interrupted his father’s fancy. “I want to 
write,” he said. 

‘ ‘ W rite ! ’ ’ Mr. Quinn exclaimed. ‘ ‘ W rite what ? ’ ’ 

“Books. Novels, I think! ...” 

Mr. Quinn put down his paper and gaped at his son. 
“Good God,” he said, “an author!” 

“Yes, father.” 

“You’re daft, Henry!” 

Henry got up from his chair, and went across to his 
father and took hold of his shoulder affectionately. “No, 
father, I’m not,” he answered. 

“Yes, you are, I tell you. You’re clean cracked! . . .” 

“ I ’ve written one novel already. ’ ’ 

Mr. Quinn threw out his hands in a despairing gesture. 
“Oh, well,” he said, “if you’ve committed yourself. . . . 
Where is it ? ” 

“It’s upstairs in my room. The manuscript, I mean. 
Of course, it hasn’t been published yet.” 

A servant came into the room to clear away the remains 
of the breakfast, and Mr. Quinn got up from his chair and 
walked through the open window on to the terrace. 

“What’s it about?” he said to Henry who had followed 
him. 

“Oh, love!” Henry answered, seating himself beside his 
father. 


CHANGING WINDS 


177 


Mr. Quinn grunted. ‘‘Huh he said, gazing intently at 
the gravel. “Is it sloppy?” 

“I don^t think so, father. At least, I hope it isn't!” 

“Or dirty?” 

“No, it isn’t dirty. I know it isn’t dirty,” Henry said 
very emphatically. 

Mr. Quinn did not .answer for a while. He got up from 
his seat and walked to the end of the terrace where he 
busied himself for a few moments in tending to a rose- 
bush. Then he returned to the seat where Henry had re- 
mained, and said, “Will you let me read it, Henry?” 

“Why, yes, father. Of course, I will,” Henry answered, 
rising and moving towards the house. “I’d like you to 
read it,” he added. “Perhaps you’ll tell me what you 
think of it?” 

“I will,” Mr. Quinn replied, closing his lips down 
tightly. 

“I’ll just go and get it,” Henry said, and he went into 
the house. 

Mr. Quinn remained seated on the terrace, looking rig- 
idly in front of him, until Henry returned, carrying a 
pile of manuscript. He took the paper from him without 
speaking, and glanced at the first sheet on which Henry 
had written in a large, clear hand : 

DRUSILLA: A NOVEL 

BY 

HENRY QUINN. 

and then he turned the page and read what was written on 
the second sheet: 

TO 

MY FATHER 

He looked at the dedication for a longer time than he had 
looked at the title-page, and his hand trembled a little as 
he held the paper. 


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CHANGING WINDS 


“I thought you wouldn’t mind, father!” Henry said. 

“Mind!” Mr. Quinn replied. “No, I don’t, Henry. I 
. . . I like it, my son. Thanks, Henry. I . . .” He got 
up and moved quickly towards the window. “I’ll just go 
in an’ start readin’ it now,” he said. 

2 

He returned the manuscript to Henry on the following 
afternoon. “I’ve read worse,” he said. 

He walked to the end of the terrace and then walked 
hack again. Then he shouted for William Henry Matier, 
who came running to him. He pointed to a daisy on the 
lawn and asked the gardener what the hell he meant by not 
keeping the weeds down. 

“Ah, sure, sir! . . 

“Koot the damn thing up,” Mr. Quinn shouted at him, 
“an’ don’t let me see another about the place or I’ll shoot 
the boots off you! I don’t know under God what I keep 
you for!” 

“Now, you don’t mean the half you say, sir! . . 

“You’re not worth ninepence a week!” 

“Aw, now,” said Matier, who knew his master, “I’m 
worth more’n that, sir!” 

“How much are you worth? Tell me that, William 
Henry Matier!” 

William Henry rooted up the daisy, and then said that 
he wouldn’t like to put too high a price on himself. . . . 

“You’d be a fool if you did,” Mr. Quinn interrupted. 

“. . . but I’d mebbe be worth about double what you 
named yourself, sir ! ” 

“Eighteenpence !” Mr. Quinn exclaimed. 

“Aye, that or a bit more. Were you wantin’ anything 
else, sir ! ” He winked heavily at Henry as he turned away. 

“You’re not worth the food you eat,” Mr. Quinn said. 

“Aw, now, sir, you never know what anybody’s worth 
’til you have need of them,” Matier replied. “A man 


CHANGING WINDS 


179 


mightn’t be worth a damn to you one day, an’ he’d mebbe 
be worth millions to you the next ! ’ ’ 

“There’s little fear of you bein’ worth millions to any 
one. Run on now an’ do your work if you’ve any work to 
do ! ” Mr. Quinn turned to Henry as the gardener went off. 
“I suppose you’ll be wantin’ to live in London for the rest 
of your life?” 

‘ ‘ I should like to go there for a while anyway, father ! ’ ’ 

“Huh! All you writin’ people seem to think there’s no 
life to be seen anywhere but in London. As if people 
hadn ’t got bowels here as well as in town ! ’ ’ 

“I don’t think that, father! ...” 

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter whether you think it or not, 
you’ll not be happy ’til you get to London, I suppose. 
You’ll stay here a wee while anyway, won’t you? You’ve 
only just come home, an’ it’s a long time since I saw you 
last!” 

“I’ll stay as long as you like, father.” 

“Very well, then. I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough of 
your company an’ then you can go off to your friends. 
How much money do you think you’ll need in London? 
Don’t ask for too much. I need every ha’penny I have for 
the work. You’ve no notion what a lot it costs to experi- 
ment wi’ land, an’ I’m not as rich as you might imagine !” 

Henry hesitated. He had never talked about money 
with his father, and he had a curious shyness about doing 
so now. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Would two hun- 
dred a year be too much? ...” 

“I’ll spare you two hundred an’ fifty!” 

“Thank you, father. It’s awfully good of you!” 

‘ ‘ Ah, wheesht with you ! Sure, why wouldn ’t a man be 
good to his own son. I suppose now you want to hear 
what I think of your book?” 

Henry smiled self-consciously. “Yes, I should like to 
know your opinion of it. I thought at first you didn’t 
think much of it. You didn’t say anything! ...” 

“I’ll give you a couple of years to improve it,” Mr. 


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CHANGING WINDS 


Quinn answered. ^‘If you can’t make it better in that 
time, you’re no good!” 

“I suppose not.” 

“An’ don’t hurry over it. Go out an’ look about you a 
bit. There’s a lot of stuff in your story that wouldn’t be 
there if you had any gumption. Get gumption, Henry!” 

“I’ll try, father. Of course, I know I’m very inexperi- 
enced. ...” 

“You are, my son, an’ what’s more you’re tellin’ every- 
body how little you know in that book of yours. Man, dear, 
women aren’t like that! . . . Well, never mind! You’ll 
find out for yourself soon enough. Mind, I don’t mean 
to say that there aren’t some good things in the book. 
There are . . . plenty! If there weren’t, I wouldn’t 
waste my breath talkin’ to you about it. But there are 
things in it that are just guff, Henry, just guff. The kind 
of romantic slush that a young fellow throws off when he 
first realises that women are . . . well, women, damn it! 
... I wish to God, you would write a book about continu- 
ous croppin’! Now, there’s a subject for a good book! 
There ’s none of your damned love about that ! . . . ” 

3 

He had not seen Sheila Morgan since the morning after 
he had failed to stop the runaway horse. Many times, 
indeed, she had been in his mind, and often at Trinity, in 
the long sleepless nights that afflict a young man who is 
newly conscious of his manhood, he had turned from side 
to side of his bed in an impotent effort to thrust her from 
his thoughts. He made fanciful pictures of her in his 
imagination, making her very beautiful and gracious. He 
saw her, then, with long dark hair that had the lustre of a 
moonless night of stars, and he imagined her, sitting close 
to him, so that her hair fell about his head and shoulder 
and he could feel the slow movement of her breasts against 
his side. He would close his eyes and think of her lips on 


CHANGING WINDS 


181 


his, and her heart beating quickly while his thumped so 
loudly that it seemed that every one must hear it . . . and 
thinking thus, he would clench his fists with futile force 
and swear to himself that he would go to her and make her 
marry him. .Once, when he had spent an afternoon at the 
Zoo in the Phoenix Park, he had lingered for a long while 
in the house where the tigers are caged because, suddenly, 
it seemed to him that the graceful beast with the bright eyes 
resembled Sheila. It moved so easily, and as it moved, 
its fine skin rippled over its muscles like running wa- 
ter. . . . 

^‘I don’t suppose she’d like to be called a tigress,” he 
had thought to himself, laughing as he did so, ^‘but that’s 
what she’s like. She’s beautiful. ...” 

And later in that afternoon, he thought he saw a resem- 
blance between Mary Graham and a brown squirrel that sat 
on a branch and cracked nuts, throwing the shells away 
carelessly . . . the Mary he had known when he first went 
to Boveyhayne, not the Mary he had seen on his last 
visit. 

He wondered whether Sheila had altered much, and then 
he wondered what change four years had made in Mary 
Graham. Sheila, who had been dominant in his mind in 
his first year at Trinity, had receded a little into the back- 
ground by the time he had quitted Dublin, but Mary, never 
very prominent, had retained her place, neither gaining nor 
losing position. It was odd, he thought to himself, that 
he had not been to Boveyhayne in the four years he had 
been at T.C.D. Mrs. Graham had invited him there several 
times, but he had not been able to accept the invitations : 
once his father had been ill, and he had had to hurry to 
Portrush, where he was staying, and remain with him until 
he was well again; and another time he had been with 
Gilbert Farlow at his home in Kent ; and another time had 
agreed to go tramping in Connacht with Marsh and Gal- 
way. Ninian and Gilbert and Roger had spent a holiday at 
Ballymartin. . . . Ninian took a whole week to realise that 


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CHANGING WINDS 


he was in Ulster and not in Scotland, and Gilbert begged 
hard for the production of a typical Irishman who would 
say “God bless your honour!^’ and “Bedad!” and “Be- 
jabers!’^ and pretended not to believe that there were not 
any “typical Irishmen”. . . and went away, vowing that 
they would compel Mr. Quinn to invite them to stay with 
him in the next vac. It was then that Ninian decided that 
he would like to be a shipbuilder. Mr. Quinn had taken 
them to Belfast to see the launch of a new liner, and Tom 
Arthurs had invited them all to join the luncheon party 
when the launch was over. The Vicereine had come from 
Dublin to cut the ribbon which would release the great ship 
and send it moving like a swan down the greasy slips into 
the river; and Tom Arthurs had conducted her through 
the Yard, telling her of the purpose of this machine and 
that engine until the poor lady began to be dubious of her 
capacity to launch the liner. There were other guides, ex- 
plaining, as Tom Arthurs explained, the functions of the 
Yard to the visitors, but Ninian had contrived to attach 
himself to Tom Arthurs and he listened to him as he talked, 
as simply as was possible, of the way in which great ships 
are built. Thereafter, Ninian had tongue for none but 
Tom Arthurs, and he told him, when the party was over 
and the guests were leaving the Yard, that he would like 
to work in the Island. Tom had doubted whether Cam- 
bridge was the proper preparation for shipbuilding. . . . 
‘ ‘ I was out of my apprenticeship when I was your age, ’ ’ he 
said . . . but he said that Ninian could think about it more 
seriously and then come to him when his time at Cam- 
bridge was up. 

“I’m thinking seriously of it now,” said Ninian. 

“All right, my boy!” Tom Arthurs answered, laughing, 
and slapped him on the back. “We’ll see what we can do 
for you!” 

And Ninian, flushing like a girl, went away full of hap- 
piness, and soon afterwards began to imitate Tom Arthurs’ 
Ulster speech in the hope that people would think he was 


CHANGING WINDS 


183 


related to the shipbuilder or, at all events, a countr 3 unan 
of his. 

It was odd, indeed, that Henry had not seen Mary in 
that time, but it was still more odd that he had not seen 
Sheila. Matt Hamilton had died soon after Henry had 
entered Trinity, but Mrs. Hamilton still had the farm 
which, people understood, was to be left to Sheila when her 
aunt died. He had not cared to go to the farm ... a 
mixture of pride and shyness prevented him from doing 
so . . . but he had hoped to meet her on the roads about 
Ballymartin. “Perhaps by this time,^’ he said to himself, 
“she will have forgotten my funk!’’ Blit although he fre- 
quently loitered in the roads about the “loanie,” he never 
met her, and it was not until he said some casual things to 
William Henry Matier that he discovered that she was not 
at the farm. “I heerd tell she was visitin’ friends in 
Bilf ast 1 ’ ’ Matier said, and with that he had to be content. 
Ninian and Gilbert and Koger were at Ballymartin then, 
and he had little opportunity to mourn over her absence; 
indeed, when he remembered that they were with him, he 
was glad that she was not at the farm : their presence would 
have made difficulties in the way of his intercourse with 
her. He would try to be alone at Ballymartin, in the next 
vacation, and then he would be able to bring her to his 
will again. But he did not spend the next vacation at 
home, and so, with this and other absences from Bally- 
martin, he was unable to see her for the whole of his time 
at Trinity. Neither he nor his father had spoken of her 
since the day when Mr. Quinn had solemnly led him to the 
library to rebuke him for his sweethearting. Mr. Quinn, 
indeed, had almost forgotten about Henry’s lovemaking 
with Sheila, and when he met the girl and remembered 
that there had been lovemaking between his son and her, 
he thought to himself that Henry had probably completely 
forgotten her. . . . 

He wished to see her again, and his desire became so 
strong that he started to walk across the fields to the 


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CHANGING WINDS 


“loanie’^ that led to Hamilton’s farm before he was aware 
of what he was about. His mind filled again with the 
visions he had had of her at Trinity, and he imagined that 
he saw her every now and then hiding behind a tree, ready 
to spring out on him and startle him with a loud whoop, or 
running from him and laughing as she ran. . . . 

4 

He met her in the “loanie,” and for a few moments he 
did not recognise her. She was sitting on the grass, in 
the shade of a hedge, huddling a baby close to her breast, 
and he saw that she was suckling it. 

“Oh, Henry, is that you?” she said, starting up hur- 
riedly so that the baby could not suck. She drew her 
blouse clumsily together, but the fretful child would not be 
pacified until she had started to feed it again, and so she 
resumed her seat on the grass. 

“I didn’t know you were back,” she said, holding the 
baby up to her. “Are you here for long?” 

He did not answer immediately. He had not yet com- 
pletely realised that this was Sheila whom he had been 
eager to marry, and then when he understood at last that 
this indeed was she, something inside him kept exclaiming, 
“But she’s got a baby!” and he wondered why she was 
feeding it. 

“Are you married, Sheila?” he said. 

She laughed at him, and answered, “That’s a quare ques- 
tion to be askin’, an’ me with this in my arms!” She 
looked at the baby as she spoke. 

“I didn’t know you were married,” he replied. “I 
was coming up to the farm to see you ! ’ ’ 

“I’ve been married this year past,” she said. 

“I didn’t know,” he murmured. “No one told 
me! ...” 

And suddenly he saw that her face was coarser than it 
had been when he loved her. Her hair was tied untidily 


CHANGING WINDS 


185 


about her head, and he could see that her hands, as she 
held the child, were rough and red, and that her nails were 
broken and misshapen. Her boots were loosely laced, and 
she seemed to be sprawling. . . . 

“I’m all throughother, ” she said, as if she realised what 
was in his mind and was anxious to excuse herself to him. 
“This wee tory hardly gives me a minute’s peace, an’ my 
aunt’s not so well as she was!” 

He nodded his head, but did not speak. 

“ Is it a boy or a girl ? ” he asked after a while. 

“It’s a boy,” she said, “an’ the very image of his da. 
He’s a lovely child, Henry. Just look at him!” 

He came nearer to her and looked at the baby who had 
his little fingers at her breast as if he would prevent her 
from taking it from him. The child, still sucking, looked 
up at him with greedy-sleepy eyes. 

“Isn’t he a gran’ wee fella?” she went on, eyeing her 
son proudly. 

“Whom did you marry?” he asked. 

“You know him well,” she answered. “Peter Logan 
that used to keep the forge . . . that’s who I married. 
D ’ye mind the way he could bend a bar of iron with his two 
hands? ...” 

Henry remembered. “Doesn’t he keep the forge now?” 
he asked. 

“No, he sold it to Dan McKittrick when he married me. 
We needed a man on the farm, an’ he’s gran’ at it. There 
isn’t a one in the place can bate him at the reapin’, an’ 
you should see the long, straight furrows he can plough. 
The child’s the image of him, an’ I declare by the way he’s 
tuggin’ at me ... be quit, will you, you wee tory, an’ not 
be hurtin’ me with your greed! . . . he’ll be as strong as 
his da, an’ mebbe stronger!” 

“Are you stayin’ long?” she said again. 

“No,” he answered. “ I ’m going to London ! ...” 

“London! Lord bless us, that’s a long way!” 

“I’m going soon ... in a day or two,” he went on, 


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CHANGING WINDS 


making his resolution as he spoke. The sight of her bare 
breast embarrassed him, and he wanted to go away 
quickly. 

^‘You^re a one for roamin’ the world, I must say!” she 
said. “You’re no sooner here nor you’re away again. 
Mebbe you’ll come up an’ see my aunt . . . she was talkin’ 
about you only last week ... an’ Peter’d be right an’ 
glad to welcome you 1 ’ ’ 

“No, thanks, not to-day,” he answered. “I’ve some- 
thing to do at home . . . I’m sorry! . . .” 

“But you said you were cornin’ to see me ! . . .” 

“I know, but I’ve just remembered something ... I’m 
sorry!” He was speaking in a jerky, agitated manner and 
he began to move away as if he were afraid that she would 
detain him. “I’ll come another time,” he added. 

“Well, you’re the quare man,” she said. “ Anybody ’d 
think you were afeard of me, the hurry you’re in to run 
away ! ’ ’ 

He laughed nervously. “Of course, I’m not afraid of 
you,” he exclaimed. “Why should I be?” 

“I don’t know!” She looked at him for a few seconds, 
and then the whimsical look that he remembered so well 
came into her eyes. “D’ye mind the way you wanted to 
marry me, Henry?” she said. 

“Yes . . . yes! Ha, ha!” 

“An’ now I’ve this! It’s a quaren funny, isn’t it?” 

“Funny?” 

“Aye, the way things go. I wonder what sort of a child 
I’d a’ had if I’d married you!” 

“I really don’t know! ... I’m afraid I must go now!” 

“Well, good-bye, Henry ! I’ll mebbe see you again some 
time ! ” 

She held out her hand to him and he took it, and then 
dropped it quickly. 

“Yes, perhaps,” he answered, and added, “Good-bye!” 

He went off quickly, not looking back until he had 
reached the foot of the “loanie,” and then he stood for a 


CHANGING WINDS 


187 


second or two to watch her. She was busy with her baby 
again. He could see her white breast shining in the sun- 
light, and her head bent over the sucking child. 

‘‘Well, I’m damned,” he said to himself, as he hurried 
off. 

And as he hurried home, his mind set on quitting Bally- 
martin as speedily as possible, he remembered the casual 
way in which she had spoken of their possibly meeting 
again. “I’ll mebbe see you some time!” she had said. 
So indifferent to him as that, she was, so happy in her love 
for her husband whom he remembered as a great big, hairy, 
tanned man who beat hot iron with heavy hammers and 
bent it into wheels and shoes for horses. 

“She takes more interest in that putty-faced brat of 
hers than she does in me,” he said to himself, angrily, and 
then, so swift were his changes of mood, he began to laugh. 
“Of course, she does,” he said aloud. “Why shouldn’t 
she? It’s hers, isn’t it?” 

He remembered her young beauty and contrasted it with 
her appearance when he saw her in the “loanie” with her 
child. In a few years, he thought, she would be like any 
village woman, worn out, misshapen, tired, with gnarled 
knuckles and thickened hands. Already she had begun to 
neglect her hair. . . . 

“It’s a damned shame,” he murmured. “If she’d mar- 
ried me she’d have kept her looks! ...” 

“But she wouldn’t marry me,” he went on. “I wasn’t 
man enough for her. . . . My God, I wish I was out of 
this!” 


5 

“Father,” he said when he got home, “I’d like to go to 
London at once!” 

“You can’t go ‘this minute, my son. There’s no train 
the night!” 

“I mean, I want to go as soon as possible!” 


188 


CHANGING WINDS 


Mr. Quinn glanced sharply at him. “You’re in a des- 
perate hurry all of a sudden,” he said. “What’s up?” 

“Nothing, father, only I want to get to work, and I can’t 
work here! ...” 

“Restless, are you? I was hopin’ you’d give me a bit 
of your company a while longer! ...” 

“I’m sorry, father! ...” 

“That’s all right, my boy, that’s all right. When do 
you want to go?” 

“To-morrow!” 

“You’ve only been home a short time. . . . Never mind! 
I’ll come up to Belfast an’ see you off. There’s a Co-op- 
erative Conference there the day after the morra, an’ I 
may as well go up with you as go up alone ! ’ ’ 

Henry knew that his father was hurt by his sudden de- 
cision to leave Ballymartin, and he felt sorry for the old 
man’s disappointment, but he felt, too, that he could not 
bear to stay near Hamilton’s farm at present, knowing that 
Sheila, whom he had loved and idealised, was likely to 
meet him in the roads at any moment, a baby in her arms, 
perhaps at her breast, and a husband somewhere near at 
hand. 

“I must go,” he told himself. “I must get over 
this. ...” 


6 

Mr. Quinn and he travelled to Belfast together on the 
following morning, and they spent the hour before the 
steamer sailed for Liverpool in pacing up and down the 
deck. 

“You can write to me when you get to London,” Mr. 
Quinn said, and Henry nodded his head. 

He was very conscious now of his father’s disappoint- 
ment, and although he was determined to go tQ London, 
he was moved by the affectionate way in which the old man 
tried to provide for his needs on the journey. 


CHANGING WINDS 


189 


‘ ‘ Hap yourself well, ’ ^ lie had said when they crossed the 
gangway on to the boat. “These steamers never give you 
enough clothes on your bunk. I'd put my overcoat on 
top of the quilt if I were you ! . . . ’ ' 

They stood for a time looking across the Lagan at the 
shipyard, and talked about the possibility of Ninian Gra- 
ham entering the shipbuilding firm, and then they moved 
to the side of the boat that was against the quay-wall. 
The hour at which the steamer was to depart was drawing 
near and the number of passengers had increased. They 
could hear the noise of the machinery as the cargo was 
lowered from the quay into the hold, and now and then, 
the squealing of pigs as the drovers pushed them up the 
gangways. A herd of cattle came through the sheds and 
stumbled in a startled, stupid fashion on to the lower decks, 
while the drovers thwacked them and shouted at them. 
There was a small crowd of people, friends of passengers 
and casual onlookers, standing on the quay waiting to see 
the ship go out, and some of them were shouting messages 
to their friends. Henry had always liked to watch crowds 
at times such as this, and often in Dublin, he had spent 
a while in Westland Row Station, looking at the people 
who were going to England. He was so interested in the 
crowd on the quay that he did not hear his father speaking 
to him. 

“I want to speak to you, Henry," the old man said, 
and then receiving no answer, he said again, “I want to 
speak to you, Henry ! ' ' 

“Yes, father?" Henry answered, without looking up. 

“Turn round a minute, Henry! ..." He hesitated, 
and Henry turning round, saw that his father was embar- 
rassed. 

“What is it, father?" he said. 

“I just wanted to say something to you, Henry. You 
see, you're beginnin' another life . . . out of my control, 
if you follow me . . . not that I ever tried to boss 
you. . . ." 


190 


CHANGING WINDS 


“No, father, youVe never done that. YouVe been aw- 
fully decent to me!^’ 

“Ah, now, no more of that ! I just wanted to say some- 
thin^ to you, only I don’t rightly know how to begin. . . .” 
He fumbled for words and then, as if making a reckless 
plunge, he blurted out, “Do you know much, Henry?” 

“Know much?” Henry answered vaguely. 

“Aye. About women an’ things? Did you know any 
women in Dublin?” 

“Oh, yes, a few!” Henry answered. 

“Did . . . did you have anything to do with them?” 

“Anything to do with them!” 

“Aye!” 

Henry began to comprehend his father ’s questions. * ‘ Oh, 
I ... I kissed one or two of them ! ” 'he said. 

“Was that all?” Mr. Quinn’s voice was so low that 
Henry had difficulty in hearing him. 

“Yes, father,” he answered. 

“You know, don’t you, that there’s other things than 
kisses? Or do you not know it?” 

Henry nodded his head. 

“I’m . . . I’m not interferin’ with you, Henry. I’m 
not just askin’ for the sake of askin’ . . . but . . . well, 
do you know anything about those . . . things?” 

He moved slightly as he spoke, as if, by moving, he 
could take the edge off his question. 

“I know about them, father. Something!” Henry said 
huskily, for his father’s questions embarrassed him 
strangely. 

“You’ve never . . . you’ve never! ...” 

“No, father!” 

Mr. Quinn turned away and looked over the side of the 
boat. He seemed to be watching a piece of orange peel 
which floated between the wall and the side of the boat. 
The flrst bell of warning to friends of passengers was 
sounded, and he turned sharply and looked at his son. 
“I’ll have to be goin’ soon,” he said. 


CHANGING WINDS 


191 


“That^s only the first bell, father, Henry replied. 
“There’s plenty of time yet!” 

“Aye!” Mr. Quinn glanced about the deck which was 
now covered by passengers. “You’ll have plenty of com- 
pany goin’ over,” he said. 

“Yes!” 

They were making conversation with difficulty. Mr. 
Quinn felt nervous and a little unhappy because Henry was 
leaving him so soon, and Henry felt disturbed because of 
the strange conversation he had just had with his father. 
He had a shamed sense of intrusion into privacies. 

“It’s very interestin’ to see a boat goin’ out to sea,” 
Mr. Quinn was saying. ‘ ‘ I used to come down here many ’s 
a time when I was a young fellow just to watch the 
steamers goin’ out. Did you ever stan’ on top of a hill 
an’ watch a boat sailin’ out to sea?” 

“No, I don’t remember doing that!” 

“It’s a fine sight, that! You see her lights shinin’ 
in the dark a long way off, but you can’t see her, except 
mebbe the foam she makes, an’ begod you near want to 
cry. That’s the way it affects me anyway. . . . Henry, if 
you ever get into any bother over the head of a woman, 
you’ll tell me, won’t you, an’ I’ll stan’ by you!” He 
said this so suddenly, coming close to Henry as he said it, 
that Henry was startled. “You’ll not forget,” he went 
on. 

“No, father, I won’t forget!” 

“I’ve been wantin’ to say that to you for a good while, 
but it’s a hard thing for a man to say to his own son. I 
could say it easier to somebody else’s son nor I can to you. 
London’s a quare place for a young fella, Henry, but it’s 
no good preachin’ to men about women ... no good at 
all. The only thing you can do is to stan’ by a man when 
he gets into bother. That ’s all, except to hope to God he ’ll 
not disgrace his name if he’s your son. You know where 
to write to, Henry, if you need any help! . . . Hilloa, 
there ’s the second bell ! ’ ’ 


192 


CHANGING WINDS 


They could hear the sailors calling out “Any more for 
the shore and the sound of hurried farewells and the 
shuffle of awkward feet along the gangways. 

“Good-bye, Henry!” 

“Good-bye, father!” 

“You’ll not forget to write now an’ awhile?” 

“I’ll write to you the minute I get to London!” 

“Ah, don’t hurry yourself! You’ll mebbe be tired out 
when you arrive. Just wait ’til the mornin’, an’ write at 
your leisure. ...” 

‘ ‘ Hurry up, sir ! ” an impatient sailor said. 

“Ah, sure, there’s plenty of time, man! Good-bye, 
Henry! I believe I’m the last one to go ashore. Well, 
so long!” 

They shook hands, and then the old man went down the 
gangway. 

“Any more for the shore?” the sailor shouted, unloos- 
ing the rope that held the gangway fast to the ship. Then 
the gangway was cast off. A bell rang, and in an instant 
the sound of the screws beating in the water was heard. A 
shudder ran through the boat as the engines began to 
move, and slowly the gap between the ship and the quay 
widened. Henry smiled at his father, and the old man 
blinked and smiled back. The passengers leant against the 
side of the boat and shouted farewells and messages to 
their friends on shore. “Mind an’ write!” “Remember 
me to every one, will you!” “Tell Maggie I was askin’ 
for her ! ’ ’ Then hats were waved and handkerchiefs were 
floated like flags. ... A woman stood near to Henry and 
cried miserably to herself. . . . The ship swung into the 
middle of the Lagan and began to move down towards the 
sea. Henry could still see his father, standing under the 
yellow glare of a large lamp hanging from the shed. He 
had taken off his hat, and was waving it to his son. It 
seemed to Henry suddenly that the old man’s hair was 
very grey and thin. ... He took out his handkerchief and 


CHANGING WINDS 


193 


waved it vigorously in response. Somewhere in the steer- 
age people were singing a hymn; 

’Til we me . . ee . . eet, ’til we me . . eet, 

’Til we meet at Je . e . su’s feet . . . Jesu’s feet, 

’Til we me . . ee . . eet, ’til we me . . eet, 

God be with you ’til we meet again! 

The slurring, sentimental sounds became extraordinarily 
human and moving in the dusky glow, and he felt tempted 
to hum the words under his breath in harmony with the 
singers in the steerage ; but two men were standing behind 
him, and he was afraid they would overhear him. He could 
hear one of them saying to his companion, “I always say, 
eat as much as you can stuff inside you, an’ run the risk 
of bein’ sick. Some people makes a point of eatin’ nothin’ 
at all when they’re crossin’ the Channel, but they’re sick 
all the same, an’ they damn near throw off their insides. 
A drop of whiskey is a good thing ! . . . ” 

The boat was making way now, and the people on the 
quay were ceasing to have separate outlines: they were 
merging in a big, dark blur under the yellow light. Henry 
could not see his father at the spot where he had stood 
when the ship moved away, and he felt disappointed when 
he thought to himself that the old man had not waited until 
the last moment. Then he saw a figure hurrying along the 
quays, waving a large white handkerchief. ... It was his 
father, trying to keep pace with the boat, and Henry 
shouted to him and waved his hands to him in a kind of 
delirium. Gradually the boat outstripped the old man, 
and at last he stood still and watched it disappearing into 
the darkness. He was still waving to Henry, but no sound 
came from him. He seemed to be terribly alone there on 
the dark quay. . . . Henry shuddered in the night air, and 
glancing about him saw that most of the passengers had 
gone down to the saloon or to their cabins. He, too, was 
almost alone. He turned to look again at his father, strain- 


194 


CHANGING WINDS 


ing to catch the last glimpse of him, and while he was 
straining thus, he heard the old man^s voice vibrating across 
the river to him. “Good-bye Henry he shouted. “God 
bless you, son!” and Henry felt that he must leap over- 
board and swim back to the shore. He waved his hand- 
kerchief towards the place where his father was standing 
and tried to shout “Good-bye, father!” to him, but his 
voice rattled weakly in his throat, and he felt tears start- 
ing in his eyes. 

“It^s silly of me to behave like this,” he murmured to 
himself, rubbing his eyes with his hand. 

The boat had passed between the Twin Islands and was 
now sailing swiftly down the Lough towards the Irish Sea. 
The lights on the quay faded into a faint yellow blur, like 
little lost stars, and presently, when the cold airs of the 
sea struck him sharply, he turned and went towards the 
saloon. 

“I hope to goodness it’ll be smooth all the way over,” 
he said to himself. 


THE THIRD CHAPTER 


1 

Roger Carey and Gilbert Farlow met him at Euston. 

“Hilloa, QuinnyP^ Gilbert said, “I’ve been made a 
dramatic critic, and I ’m to do my first play to-night ! ’ ’ 

“Hurray!” he answered, and turned to greet Roger. 

“We’ve bagged a taxi,” Gilbert went on. “The driver 
looks cheeky . . . that’s why we hired him. We’ll give 
him a tuppenny tip and then we’ll give him in 
charge! ...” 

“All taxi drivers are cheeky,” Roger interrupted. 

“But this is a very cheeky one! . . . Hi, porter!” 

It was extraordinarily good to be with Gilbert and Roger 
again; extraordinarily good to hear Gilbert’s exaggerated 
speech and see him ordering people about without hurt- 
ing their feelings; extraordinarily good to listen to Roger’s 
slow, unfliekering voice as he stated the facts . . . for 
Roger had always stated the facts. In all their discussions, 
it was Roger who reminded them of the essential things, 
refusing persistently to be carried away by Gilbert’s imag- 
ination or Ninkn’s impatience. People were sometimes ir- 
ritated by Roger’s slow, imperturbable way of speaking 
. . . they called him a prig . . . but as they knew him 
better, they lost their irritation and thought of him with 
respect. “But we’re all prigs,” Gilbert said once in reply 
to some one who sneered at Roger. “Ninian and Quinny 
and Roger and me, we’re frightful prigs. That’s because 
we’re so much brainier than most people. Of course, 
Roger was Second Wrangler, and that affects a man, I sup- 
pose, but he’s terribly clever, young Roger is! . . .” 

As they drove home, Gilbert told their news to Henry. 

195 


196 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘Ninian’s coming up to-morrow . . . sooner than he 
meant to. He’s very keen on going to Harland and Wolff’s, 
but he’s afraid he’s too old to begin building ships. Tom 
Arthurs says he ought to have gone straight to the Island 
from Rumpell’s instead of going to Cambridge, and poor 
old Ninian was horribly blasphemous about it all. It’s 
funny to hear him trying to talk like an Orangeman . . . 
he mixes it up with Devonshire dialect . . . and thinks he ’s 
imitating Tom Arthurs. I suppose he’ll have to content" 
himself with building railways and things like that. It ’s a 
great pity!” 

“I don’t believe he really wants to be a shipbuilder,” 
Roger said. “He likes Tom Arthurs, and he wants to be 
what Arthurs is. That ’s all. If Arthurs were a comedian, 
Ninian would want to be a comedian, too 1 ’ ’ 

“It must be splendid,” Henry murmured, “to be able 
to influence people like that!” 

The taxi drew up to the door of a house in one of the 
quieter Bloomsbury squares, and Henry, looking out of 
the window, while Gilbert opened the door of the cab, saw 
that the garden in the centre of the square was very green. 
He could see figures in white flannels running and jumping, 
and the sound of tennis balls, as they collided with the 
racquets, pleased him. 

“Your room overlooks the square,” .Gilbert said, as 
Henry got out of the cab. 

“Splendid!” he replied. “I shall imagine I’m in Dub- 
lin when I look out of the window. It’s just like Merrion 
Square! ...” 

“Well, pay the cabby, will you? I’m broke!” said Gil- 
bert. 

“You always are,” Roger murmured. 

2 

Ninian joined them on the following day, very cheer- 
less and irritable. It was impossible for him to enter the 


CHANGING WINDS 


197 


shipbuilding firm owing to his age, and so he had decided to 
enter the offices of a firm of engineers in London. “Any- 
body can build a damned railway,’^ he said, “but it takes 
a man to build a ship. I’d love to build a liner . . . one 
that could cross the Atlantic in four days ! ’ ’ 

“Four days!” Gilbert scoffed. “My dear Ninian, boats 
don ’t crawl across the ocean ! People want boats that will 
take them to New York in twenty-four hours! ...” 

“And now, young fellows!” he went on, “it’s time that 
we thought seriously about our immortal souls!” 

“Oh, is it?” said Ninian. 

“Yes, it is,” Gilbert replied. 

They had dined, and were now sitting in Gilbert’s room 
in the lax attitude of people who have eaten well and are 
content. 

“Here we are,” Gilbert went on, using his pipe as a 
modulator of his points, “four bright lads simply bursting 
with brains, and the question is, what is to become of us? 
The Boy: What Will He Become? Take Roger, for ex- 
ample, will he become Lord Chancellor of England, or a 
footling little Registrar of a footling County Court? . . .” 

“I haven’t had a brief yet,” Roger interrupted, “so that 
question’s somewhat premature, isn’t it?” 

“I’m not talking about now ... I’m talking about the 
future,” Gilbert replied. “We ought to have some notion 
of what we’re going to do with our lives. ... As a matter 
of fact,” he continued, “your career’s fairly certain, Roger. 
With all that brain oozing out of you, you’re bound to be- 
come great. But what about little Ninian here? And 
Quinny? And me? Ninian ’s a discontented sort of bloke, 
and he’s quite likely to make a mess of things unless we 
look after him. He may turn out to be a very great engi- 
neer or he may go back to Boveyhayne and play the turnip- 
headed squire! ...” 

“Always rotting a chap,” Ninian mumbled. 

“And Quinny . . . what about little Quinny? He’s 
written a novel! ...” 


198 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Written a what?’^ Ninian demanded, sitting up sharply. 

“Have you, Quinny?’^ said Roger. 

Henry blushed and nodded his head. “It isn’t good,’^ 
he said. ‘ ‘ I shall have to re-write it ! ” 

“My Lord,” said Ninian, “fancy one of us writing a 
book!” 

Gilbert slapped him on the side of the head. “You for- 
get, Ninian, that I’ve written a play! ...” 

“A play’s not a book! ...” 

^‘My plays are books,” Gilbert retorted. “Well, now,” 
he went on, “what’s to become of little Quinny: a tip-top 
novelist with a limited circulation or a third-rater who sells 
millions ? ’ ’ 

“What about yourself?” Ninian said. 

“I’m coming to myself. Will I become a great dram- 
atist, like Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw and all those 
chaps, or merely turn out hack plays ? . . . ” 

“And the answer is?” 

“I don’t know, but I’ll tell you in ten years’ time. 
We’re a brainy lot of lads, and I’m the brainiest of the 
lot! . . .” 

“Oh, no, you’re not,” said Ninian. “I’ve quite a re- 
spectable amount of brain myself, but the very best brain 
in the room belongs to Roger. Doesn’t it, Roger?” 

“I don’t despise my brain, Ninian!” Roger answered. 

‘ ‘ Observe the modest demeanour of the truly great man, ’ ’ 
Gilbert exclaimed. “You’ll have to go into politics, Roger. 
It isn’t any good being a barrister unless you do!” 

“I’ve thought of that,” Roger answered. “At the mo- 
ment, I’m wondering which side I’m on. I might manage 
to get a seat as a Liberal, but I don’t believe it would be 
of much use to me if I got it. I think I shall join the 
Tories! ...” 

“Are you a Tory?” Ninian said, “I thought you were a 
Liberal!” 

“No, I’m a barrister. You see,” he went on, as if he 
were arguing a case, “the Liberal majority is too big and 


CHANGING WINDS 


199 


there are far too many clever young men in the party. I 
should only he one of a crowd if I went into the House 
now as a Liberal . . . and of course I'm not likely to be 
given a chance of standing for a seat because they’ve a lot 
of people on the list already. But the Tories have hardly 
any clever chaps left. There’s Balfour and there’s Cham- 
berlain . . . and then what is there?” 

‘‘Nothing!” said Gilbert. 

“A clever man of my age has the chance of a lifetime 
with the Tories now,” Roger continued. “Look at F. E. 
Robinson . . . and he’s only a third-rater!” 

Gilbert told a story of the early days of the Tory Party 
after the General Election of 1900 when the Tories had been 
completely routed by the Liberals. “The Tory remnant 
was as thick-headed as it could be,” he said, “and the 
Liberals were bursting with brains. Balfour came into the 
House one night ... he’d just been re-elected . . . and 
he sat down beside Chamberlain. They were frightfully 
blue. Balfour had a look at the Liberals, and then he 
turned to his own back-benches and had a look at the 
Tories. Of course, it may not be true, but they say he 
went pale with fright. He turned to Chamberlain and 
said, “My God, Joseph!” and then Chamberlain turned 
and looked at the Tories and said, “My God, Arthur!” 
You see, Chamberlain never noticed things until Balfour 
pointed them out to him, and then he noticed them too 
much. They went out of the House immediately after- 
wards and shook hands with each other, and Chamberlain 
said ‘Arthur, weWe the Opposition!’ And so* they were. 
Poor Balfour was awfully lonely after Chamberlain crocked 
up. Not a soul on his own side that was fit to talk to! 
It was easy enough for P. E. Robinson to make a name in a 
crowd like that. And they loathe him, too. He’s such a 
bounder! But they need a fellow to heave mud, so they 
put up with him. Roger’s got more brains in his little 
finger than that fellow has in his whole body. Haven’t 
you, Roger?” 


200 


CHANGING WINDS 


“People don’t have brains in their little fingers,” Koger 
answered. 

“You should join the Tories, Koger,” Ninian said. 
“There really isn’t much difference between them. My 
father was a Conservative, but my Uncle Geoffrey was a 
Liberal. When father was in, uncle was out. It amounted 
to the same thing in the end ! . . . ” 

“But Roger ought to be a different sort of Tory!” Gil- 
bert exclaimed. “It’s no good having all his brain if 
he’s just going to peddle around with the same old 
stuff. ...” 

“I don’t intend to do that,” said Roger. 

“Well, what do you intend to do?” 

Ninian seized a cushion and put it behind his back. 

“Let’s have a good old argle-bargle, ” he said. “What 
do you say, Quinny?” 

Henry, who had not joined in the discussion, leant for- 
ward and smiled. “Oh, I like listening to you,” he an- 
swered. “You’re all so sure of yourselves! ...” 

Gilbert turned on him. “Well, aren’t you sure of your- 
self?” he demanded. 

“No, I’m not,” Henry answered. “I never am!” 

“That’s queer,” said Gilbert. 

“Damned queer,” said Ninian. 

“Why are you so uncertain of yourself?” Roger asked. 

“Don’t you feel sure that you’ll be a great novelist?” 
Gilbert added before Henry had time to reply to Reger’s 
question. 

“I know jolly well I shall be a clinking good engineer!” 
Ninian said. 

Henry had a shy unwillingness to discuss himself in front 
of the others, although they were his closest friends. He 
felt that he could not sit still while they watched him as 
he told them of his ambitions and his fears. 

“Oh, don’t let’s talk about me,” he said. “Go on with 
your argle-bargle.” He was speaking hurriedly, so that 
he had difficulty in articulating his words. “You were 


CHANGING WINDS 


201 


saying something, Ninian, weren’t you ... no, it was you, 
Roger, about politics! ...” 

“Oh, yes!” Roger answered. 

“Rum chap, you are!” Gilbert said to Henry in a low 
voice. 


3 

“You see,” said Roger, “my notion is to restore the 
prestige of the Tories. Somehow, they’ve let themselves 
get the reputation of being consciously heartless. The 
Liberals go about proclaiming that they are the friends 
of the poor, and the inference is that the Tories are the 
friends of the rich!” 

“So they are,” said Ninian. 

‘ ‘ So are the Liberals ! ’ ’ said Roger. 

“So’s everybody!” said Gilbert. 

“But the Tories aren’t culpably the friends of the rich,” 
Roger continued. “I mean, they don’t go into parliament 
with the intention of exploiting poor men for the benefit 
of rich men. It isn’t true that they are indifferent to the 
fate of poor men; but they have allowed the Liberals to 
give them that character. I ’ve always said that the Tories 
have the courage of the Liberals’ convictions! ...” 

Gilbert lay back on the floor with his arms under his 
head. “I remember the first time you said that. It was 
in the Union!” he exclaimed. 

“I shall say it again in the House some day,” Roger 
retorted. “I’m not trying to be funny when I say that. I 
think the history of the Tory Party shows very plainly 
that the Tories have done very admirable things for the 
working-people: Factory Acts and Housing schemes and 
Workmen’s Compensation Acts. Well, I want the Tory 
Party to remember that it is the custodian of the decency 
of England. It isn’t decent that there should be hungry 
children and unemployed men and badly-housed families. 
That kind of thing is intolerable to a gentleman, and a 


CHANGING WINDS 


Tory is a gentleman. It seems to me inconceivable that 
a Tory should be willing to make money by cheating a 
child out of a meal . . . but there are plenty of Liberals 
who do that. And I’m against all this legislation which 
makes some public authority do things for people which 
they ought to be doing for themselves. I mean, I hate the 
notion of the State feeding hungry school-children because 
the parents cannot afford to feed them, when the proper 
thing to do is to see that the parents are paid enough for 
their work to enable them to feed their children themselves. 
I suppose I’m sloppy . . . the Fabians used to say so at 
Cambridge . . . but I prefer the spectacle of a family 
round its own table to the spectacle of a crowd of assorted 
youngsters round a municipal school table! And I don’t 
think we’re getting the most out of our people 1 Just think 
of the millions of men and women in this country who 
really do not earn more than their keep I That isn ’t good 
enough. If you can only just keep yourself going, then 
you’ve no right to go . . . except to hell as quickly as 
possible. My idea is that we waste potentialities at present, 
not by squandering them, but by never using them. All 
those poor people, for example, how do we know that some 
of them, if given an opportunity, would not be amazingly 
worth while! There must be a great deal of brain-power 
simply chucked away or misused. I know that lots of peo- 
ple believe that men of genius work their way up to their 
level no matter how low down they begin, but I doubt that, 
and anyhow I’m not talking of geniuses ... I’m talking 
of the average clever man . . . there must be men of good 
average quality lost in slums because none of us have taken 
the trouble to clear the ground for them. And the ground 
has to be cleared! You can’t grow wheat on a sour soil. 
I often think when I see some hooligan brought into Court 
that, given a real chance, he might have been a better judge 
than the man who sends him to gaol. The Tory’s job is 
to restore the balance of things. It isn’t only to maintain 


CHANGING WINDS 


203 


the level, but to raise it and to keep on raising it. ... I 
believe in the State of Poise, of equitable adjustment, in 
which every man will be able to move easily to his proper 
place. . . . There are so many obstacles now in the way 
of man finding his place that, even if he has the strength 
to get over them, he probably won’t have the strength to 
fill it. . . 

‘‘My view, perhaps, is narrower than yours, Koger,” 
Henry said, “but I see all these people chiefiy as men and 
women who are shut out of things : books and pictures and 
plays and music and all the decent things. I don’t believe 
;:hat if they had the chance they would all read Meredith 
and admire Whistler and go to see Shaw’s plays and want 
to listen to Wagner . . . that’s not the point, and anyhow 
the middle and the upper classes are not all marvellously 
cultured. My point is that their lives are such that they 
don’t even know of Meredith and Whistler and Shaw and 
Wagner. They don’t even know of the second-rate people 
or the third rate. Magnolia, for instance ... I suppose 
she reads novelettes, and when she grows out of novel- 
ettes, she won’t read anything. And she can’t afford to 
go to a West End theatre. . . . When I think of these peo- 
ple, millions of ’em, I think of them as people like Mag- 
nolia, completely shut out of things like that, not even 
aware of them. ...” 

They spent the remainder of the evening in argument, 
their talk ranging over the wide field of human activity. 
They established a system of continual criticism of existing 
institutions. “Challenge everything,” said Gilbert; 
“make it justify its existence.” They tried to discover the 
truth about things, to shed their prejudices and to see the 
facts of life exactly as they were. “The great thing is to 
get rid of Slop !” said Roger. “We’ve got to convince the 
judge as well as move the jury. It isn’t enough to make 
the jury feel sloppy . . . any ass can do that. You’ve 
got to convince the old chap on the bench or you won’t get 


204 


CHANGING WINDS 


a verdict. That^s my belief, and I believe, too, that the 
jury is more likely to listen to reason than people im- 
agine !’^ 

They did not finish their argument that evening nor on 
any particular evening. They were spread over a long 
period, and were part of the process of clearing their 
minds of cobwebs. 

Gilbert had dedicated his life to the renascence of the 
drama and had written a couple of plays which, he ad- 
mitted to his friends, had not got the right stuff in them. 
‘‘I donT know enough yet,’’’ he said once to Henry, “but 
I’m learning. ...” His dramatic criticism was very 
pointed, and he speedily acquired a reputation among peo- 
ple who are interested in the theatre, as an acute but harsh 
critic, and already attempts had been made by theatrical 
managers either to bribe him or get him dismissed from 
his paper. The bribing process was quite delicately oper- 
ated. One manager wrote to him, charmingly plaintive 
about his criticism, and invited him to put himself in the 
manager’s place. “I assure you,” ho wrote, “I would 
willingly produce good work if I could get it, but I can’t. 
Come and see me, and I’ll show you a pile of plays that 
have arrived within the last fortnight. I know quite well, 
without reading them, that not one of them will be of the 
slightest worth!” And Gilbert had gone to see him, and 
had been received very charmingly and told how clever he 
was, and then the manager had offered to appoint him 
reader of plays at a pleasant fee I . . . Following that at- 
tempt at bribery came the anger of an actor-knight who 
declined to admit Gilbert to his theatre, a piece of petu- 
lance which delighted him. 

“The great big balloon,” he said to his editor when he 
was told of what the actor-knight had said over the tele- 
phone. “My Lord, when I hear him spouting blank verse 
through his nose! ...” 

“That’s all very fine,” the editor retorted ruefully, 
“but your criticism’s doing us a lot of harm. Jefferson of 


CHANGING WINDS 


205 


the Torch Theatre cancelled his advertisement the day 
after your notice of his new play appeared ! ’ ’ 

“Ridiculous ass !’^ said Gilbert. 

“Well, if you say his play’s the worst that’s ever been 
put on any stage, what do you expect him to do? Fall 
on your neck and say, ‘Bless you, brother!’? You might 
try to be kinder to them, Farlow, and do for the love of 
God remember the advertisement manager. If you could 
get the human note in your stuff! ...” 

“The what?” 

“The human note. I’m a great believer in the human 
note. ’ ’ 

Gilbert left the office as quickly as he could and went 
home. He came into the dining-room where the others 
were already seated at their meal. 

“You’re late again, Gilbert,” said Roger. “Hand over 
your sixpence!” 

Roger, who was never late for anything, had instituted 
a system of fines for those who were late for meals. The 
fine for unpunctuality at dinner was sixpence. 

“I haven’t got a tanner, damn it,” Gilbert snapped, 
“and I’m looking for the human note. That’s why 
I’m late. My heavenly father, I’m hungry! What is 
there?” 

“Sixpence for being late for dinner,” said Roger quietly, 
“and tuppence for blasphemy!” 

He entered the amounts in the “Ledger,” and then 
returned to his seat. “You already owe six and three- 
pence,” he said, as he sat down, “and this evening’s fines 
bring it up to six and elevenpence. You ought to pay some- 
thing on account, Gilbert! ...” 

“Pass the potatoes and don’t bleat so much!” said Gil- 
bert. “Look here, Quinny,” he said as he helped himself 
to the potatoes, “what’s the human note, and don’t you 
think tuppence is too much for blasphemy?” 

“Ask Ninian,” Henry answered. “He knows all about 
humanity!” 


206 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘ ‘ No, he doesn ’t. Bally mechanic ! Aren ’t you, Ninian ? 
Aren’t you a damn little mechanic with a screw-driver for 
a soul! . . 

“You’ll get a punch on the jaw in a minute, young fel- 
low me lad 1 ’ ’ Ninian exclaimed, leaning over the table and 
slapping Gilbert on the cheek. 

“Fined fourpence for threat of physical violence and 
ninepence for executing the same,” Roger murmured. 
“I’ll enter it presently.” 

“Somebody should slay Roger,” Gilbert said. “Some- 
body should take hold of his neat little neck and wring 
it! . . .” 

They finished their meal and sat back in their chairs, 
smoking and chattering. 

“What’s all this about the human note, Gilbert?” Henry 
asked, and Gilbert explained what had happened to him 
in the editor’s room. “I stopped a bobby in the Strand 
and asked him about it,” he said, “but he told me to move 
on. You ought to know what the human note is, Quinny. 
You’re a novelist, and novelists are supposed to know 
everything nowadays ! ’ ’ 

He did not wait for Henry to explain the meaning of 
the human note. “I know what Dilton means by it,” he 
said. “When he talks of the human note he means the 
greasy touch ! ’ ’ 

“Slop in fact!” said Roger. 

“That’s it. Slop! My God, these journalists do love 
to splash about in their emotions. They can’t mention the 
North Pole without gulping in their throats. Dilton gave 
me an example of the human note. There was a bye-elec- 
tion in the East End the other day and one of the candi- 
dates put his unfortunate infants into ‘pearlies’ and 
hawked them about the constituency in a costermonger’s 
barrow, carrying a notice with ‘Vote for Our Daddy!’ 
on it. Dilton damned near blubbed when he told me about 
it!” 

“Rage?” said Henry. 


CHANGING WINDS 


m 


‘^Rage!^’ Gilbert exclaimed. “Good Lord, no! The 
man was moved, touched 1 ... He blew his nose hard, and 
then told me that one touch of nature makes the whole 
world kin ! I ’m damned if he didn ’t write a leading article 
about it . . . and they give him a couple of thousand a 
year for organising sniffs for the million. All over Eng- 
gland, I suppose there were people snivelling over those 
brats and telling each other that one touch of nature makes 
the whole world kin! . . . Oof! gimme the whisky, some- 
body, for the love of the Lordy God! I want to be sick 
when I think of the human note!’’ 

‘‘Well, of course,” said Roger, “the slop is there, and 
it’s no good getting angry about it. What I want is a 
Party that won’t deal in it. I’ve always believed that the 
mob likes an honest man, even if it does call him a Prig, 
and I’m perfectly certain that when a Prig gets let down 
by the mob it’s because in some subconscious way it knows 
he’s only pretending to be honest . . . unless, of course, 
it ’s gone off its head with passion of some sort : Boer war 
jingoism and that kind of thing. And my notion of a mem- 
ber of parliament is a man who represents some degree of 
general feeling. If he doesn’t represent that general feel- 
ing he can only do one of two things: try to convert the 
general opinion to his point of view or else, if he can’t 
convert it, tell it he’ll be damned if he’ll represent it 
any longer. That’s the attitude I shall adopt in the 
House! ...” 

But Gilbert thought that this was a dangerous attitude 
to maintain. 

“If you maintain it too long, you’ll never get an office,” 
he said, “and so the only work you’ll be able to do will 
be critical work: you’ll never get a chance to do anything 
constructive; and if you let the Government nobble you, 
and give you an Under Secretaryship the moment they see 
you getting dangerous, then you’re done for. And any- 
how, I don ’t believe in independent members of parliament. 
A certain number of sheep are necessary in every organi- 


208 


CHANGING WINDS 


sation, in parliament as much as anywhere else. It would 
be absolutely impossible to carry on Government if the 
whole six hundred and seventy members of parliament were 
as clever and as independent as Lord Hugh Cecil. You 
must have sheep and lots of ’em ! . . . ” 

‘‘But they needn’t be dead sheep,” said Roger. “They 
needn’t be mutton, need they?” 

“No, they needn’t be mutton, but they must be sheep,” 
Gilbert replied. 

“All the politicians I’ve ever met,” said Ninian, “were 
like New Zealand lamb . . . frozen ! ’ ’ 

Gilbert leaped on him and slapped his back, capsizing 
him on to the floor. “Ninian, my son,” he said, “that’s 
a good line. Do you mind if I put it in my comedy. It 
doesn’t matter whether you do or not, but I’d like your 
consent. ’ ’ 

“Don’t be an old ass,” said Ninian. 

“Can I use that line about the New Zealand lamb? . . .” 

“Yes, yes . . . any damn thing . . . only get off my 
chest! You’re . . . you’re squeezing the inside out of me. 
Get up, will you! ...” 

“I’m really quite comfortable, thanks, Ninian. If it 
weren ’t for this whacking big bone here ! . . . ” 

He did not complete the sentence, for Ninian, with a 
heaving effort, threw him on to the floor, where they 
scrambled and punched each other. . . . 

“There is a fine of eighteenpence, ” said Roger, “for 
disorderly conduct. I’ll just enter it against you 
both!” 

The combatants rose and routed Roger, and when they 
had disposed of him, Ninian agreed to let Gilbert use his 
line about the frozen meat. “I shall expect you to put a 
note in the programme that the epigram in the second act 
was supplied by Mr. Ninian Graham,” he said. 

The epigram ! ’ ’ Gilbert exclaimed. “T/ie epigram ! ’ ’ 

“Why, will there be any more?” said Ninian innocently. 

Hostilities thereupon broke out again. 


CHANGING WINDS 


209 


4 

They sat up late that night talking of themselves and 
of England and public affairs. Roger was interested in 
Trade Unions, and he lamented the fact that the Tories had 
allowed an alliance to be formed between Labour and 
Liberalism. ‘‘Ask any workman you meet in the street 
whether he’d rather work for a Liberal or a Tory, and I 
bet you what you like, the chances are that he ’ll plump for 
the Tory. His experience is that the Tory’s the better 
employer, and the reason why that’s so is that the Liberal 
conducts his business on principles, whereas the Tory con- 
ducts his on instincts. In principle, the Liberal concedes 
most things to the workman, but in practice he doesn’t: 
in principle, the Tory concedes nothing to the workman, 
but in practice he treats him decently. The workman 
knows that, but the fool goes and votes for the Liberal, 
and the fool of a Tory lets him! . . .You know,” he went 
on, “this Trade Union movement has got on to wrong lines 
altogether. Their chief function seems to be to protect 
their members from . . . well, from being cheated. That’s 
what it comes to. I don’t blame ’em. They’ve had to 
behave like that. I don’t think any one can read Webb’s 
‘Industrial Democracy’ and ‘The History of Trade Un- 
ionism’ without feeling that, on the whole, employers have 
been rather caddish to workmen ... so I don’t blame the 
Unions for making so much fuss about their rights. But 
I ’d like to see them making as much fuss about the quality 
of the work done by their members. That ’s their real func- 
tion. It isn’t enough to keep up the standard of wages 
and of conditions of employment— they ought also to keep 
up the standard of work 1 ’ ’ 

This led them into a wrangle about the responsibility 
for the blame for this indifference to quality of work. 

“I suppose,” said Roger, “employers and employed are 
to blame. I think myself it’s the result of a world tend- 
ency towards hustle ... to get the thing done as quickly 


210 


CHANGING WINDS 


as possible without regard to the quality of it. I suppose 
a modern contractor would break his heart if he were 
asked to spend his lifetime on one cathedral . . . but peo- 
ple were proud to do that in the Middle Ages. WeM build 
half a dozen cathedrals while a Middle Ages man was dec- 
orating a gargoyle ! ’ ’ 

“Well, we have this comfort,^’ said Ninian, “the modern 
builder’s stuff won’t last as long as Westminster Abbey!” 

“I hate all this bleat about the Middle Ages,” Gilbert 
exclaimed. “I’m surprised to hear you, Eoger, talking 
like that fat papist, Belloc. One ’ud think to hear you talk- 
ing that no one ever did shoddy work until the nineteenth 
century, but Christopher Wren let a lot of shoddy stuff 
into St. Paul’s Cathedral. There were fraudulent con- 
tractors then, and jerry-builders, just as there are now, and 
there probably always will be people who give a bad 
return for their wages! ...” 

“That’s why I want to see the Tory Party resuscitated,” 
said Roger. “I want to limit the number of such people 
and to make every man feel that it’s a gentlemanly thing to 
do your best, whatever your job is, and that payment has 
nothing whatever to do with the way you do your work ! ’ ’ 

The whole industrial system would need re-shaping, the 
whole social system would need re-shaping, the Empire 
would need re-shaping. 

“This craving for cheapness has cheapened nothing but 
life,” said Roger, “and it brings incalculable trouble with 
it. I mean, a ha’penny saved now means pounds lost later. 
Oh, that’s a platitude, I know, but we pay no heed to 
it. I’ve never been to America, but we know quite well 
that one of the most serious problems for the Americans 
is the negro problem. I heard a Rhodes scholar talking 
about it once. He simply foamed at the mouth. He 
hadn’t any plan for it . . . didn’t seem to realise that 
a plan could be made . . . and you know they’ve only got 
that problem through the greediness of their ancestors. 
Negroes aren’t native to America. The planters wanted 


CHANGING WINDS 


211 


cheap labour and so they imported them . . . and the 
end of that business is the Negro Problem ! ’ ^ 

^‘And lynchings and a Civil War in between/’ Henry 
murmured. ‘‘That’s the most hateful part of it . . . the 
killing and the bitterness.” 

“Great Scott!” said Ninian, “think of all those Yankees 
killing each other so that niggers might wear spats and top 
hats and sing coon songs in the music halls! . . . Damn 
silly, I call it!” 

“We’ve got to make people believe that it isn’t what 
you get that matters, but what you do,” Roger went on. 
“All this footling squabble between workmen and em- 
ployers about a farthing an hour more or a farthing an 
hour less . . . isn’t decent ... it isn’t gentlemanly. Oh, 
I know very well that the counter-jumper thinks it’s very 
clever to trick a customer out of a ha’penny . . . but it 
doesn’t last, that kind of profit. We lost America because 
we behaved like cads to the colonists, and we’ll lose every- 
thing if we continue to play the counter-jumper trick. It 
isn’t very popular now to talk about gentlemen . . . people 
sneer at the word . . . but I’d rather die like a gentleman 
than live like a cad . . . and that ’s the spirit I want to see 
restored to the Tory Party. It’s awfully needed in Eng- 
land now!” 

They began to lay plans for an Improved Tory Party 
that included an alliance with Labour and a closer confed- 
eration of the colonies, together with a definite understand- 
ing with America. 

“And what about Ireland?” said Henry. 

“Oh, of course, Ireland must have Home Rule and be 
treated like a colony. Nobody but a fool wants to treat it 
in any other way ! ’ ’ said Roger. 

“There are an awful lot of fools in the world,” Gilbert 
said. 

“I know that,” Roger retorted, “but need we trouble 
about them?” 

“We’ve got to get a group of fellows together on much 


212 


CHANGING WINDS 


the same principle as the Fabian Society ... no one to 
be admitted unless he has brains and is willing to work 
without payment. Look at the work that Sidney Webb 
and Bernard Shaw and all those people did for Socialism 
for nothing, even paying for it out of their own pockets 
when they weren’t over-flush . . . my goodness, if we can 
only get people with that kind of spirit into our group, 
we’ll mould the world! By the way, we ought to pinch 
some ideas from the Fabians! We could meet somewhere 
. . . here, to begin with. And when we’ve got a group of 
fellows together with some notion of what we all want to 
do, we can start inviting eminent ones to talk to us . . . 
and heckle the stuffing out of them ! ’ ’ 

Gilbert was able to tell them a great deal about the 
origin of the Fabian Society . . . for his father was one 
of the founders of it . . . and he told them how the Society 
had invited Mr. Haldane to talk to them . . . and of the 
way in which they had fallen on him in the discussion and 
left all his arguments in shreds when the meeting 
ended. . . . ‘Hf we can get Balfour or Asquith or some 
other Eminent Pot here,” he said, “and simply argue 
hell’s blazes out of him . . . my Lordy God, that ’ud be 
great ! ’ ’ 

“They’re not likely to come,” said Ninian. 

“I don’t know. Eminent Ones sometimes do the most 
unusual things!” 

Ninian yawned and stretched his arms. “I move that 
this House be now adjourned!” he said. 

But they ignored his sleepiness, and he would not move 
away from their company. 

“Well, we’ve settled what our future is to be,” said Gil- 
bert. 

“What is it to be?” Ninian interrupted, stifling another 
yawn. 

“Weren’t you listening? We’re to be Improved Tories 
. . . and we’re to improve the Universe, so to speak. 
We’ve just settled it. All the Old Birds are to be hoofed 


CHANGING WINDS 


213 


out of office, and we’re to take their places, and I thor- 
oughly approve of that. In my opinion, any man who 
wants to occupy a place of authority after the age of 
sixty should be publicly and cruelly pole-axed. I can’t 
stand old men . . . they’re so cowardly and so obstinate 
and so conceited!” 

^‘The great thing,” said Koger, ^‘is to keep ourselves 
from sloppiness. We mustn’t make fools of ourselves!” 

“The principal way in which a man makes a fool of 
himself,” Gilbert added, “is in connexion with the female 
species. Is that what you mean, Eoger?” Koger nodded 
his head. “Pay attention to that, Ninian,” Gilbert went 
on. “You have a weakness for females, I’ve noticed!” 

Ninian, suddenly forgetting his fatigue, sat up in his 
seat. “I say, let’s jaw about women,” he said. 

“No,” Gilbert replied. “We won’t . . . not at this 
hour of the morning ! ’ ’ But, disregarding his decision, he 
went on, “My view of women is that we all make too 
much fuss about ’em! Either we damn them excessively 
or we praise them excessively. They’re a cursed nuisance 
in literature. All the writers seem to think that man 
was made for woman or woman for man, and they write 
and write about sex and love as if there weren’t other things 
in the world besides women ! ’ ’ 

“I’d like to know what else we were made for?” Henry 
said. 

“We were made to do our jobs,” Roger answered. “I 
believe in what I may call the modified anchorite . . . 
women are too emotional and get between a man and his 
work. Love is an excellent thing . . . excellent . . . but 
there are other things! ...” 

“What else is there?” Henry demanded almost crossly. 
He felt vaguely stirred by what was being said, vaguely 
antagonistic to it. 

“Oh, lots of things,” Roger answered. “Fighting for 
your place, moving multitudes to do your will ... oh, lots 
of things ! ’ ' 


214 


CHANGING WINDS 


Gilbert had read some of Henry’s novel, and he now 
began to talk about it. 

^‘You turn on the Slop-tap too often,” he said. 
‘‘Quinny, my son, you’re a clever little chap, but you’re 
frightfully sloppy. I ’ve read a lot more of your 
novel. ...” 

^‘Yes?” said Henry, nervously anxious to hear his crit- 
icism. 

‘‘Slop!” Gilbert continued. “Just slop, Quinny! 
Women aren’t like lumps of dough that a baker punches 
into any shape he likes, and they aren’t sticks of barley 
sugar. ...” 

“No, they aren’t,” Roger interrupted. “Wait till you 
see my cousin Rachel. ...” 

“Have you got a cousin, Roger? How damned odd!” 
said Gilbert. 

“Yes. I must bring her round here one evening. She’s 
not a bad female . . . quite intelligent for her sex. Go 
on!” 

“They’re like us, Quinny!” Gilbert continued. 
“They’re good in parts and bad in parts. That’s the vital 
discovery of the twentieth century, and I ’ve made it ! . . . ” 

Henry had been eager to hear Gilbert’s criticism of 
his novel, but this kind of talk irritated him, though he 
could not understand why it irritated him, and his irri- 
tation drove him to sneers. 

“I suppose,” he said, “you want to substitute Social 
Reform and Improved Toryism for Romance. Lordy God, 
man, do you want to put eugenics and blue-books in place 
of the love of woman?” 

“You’re getting cross, Quinny! ...” 

“No, I’m not!” 

“Oh, yes, you are . . . very cross . . . and you know 
what the fine for it is. If you want my opinion, here it is. 
I am prepared to accept eugenics and blue-books as a sub- 
stitute for the love of women ... if they’re interesting. 


CHANGING WINDS 


S15 


of course. That’s all I ask of any one or anything . . . 
that it shall interest me. I don’t care what it is, so long 
as it doesn’t bore me. Women bore me . . . women in 
books and plays, I mean . . . because they’re all of a pat- 
tern: lovebirds. I’ve never seen a play in which the 
women weren’t used for sloppy emotional purposes. The 
minute I see a woman walking on to the stage, I say to 
myself, ‘ Here comes the Slop-tap ! ’ and as sure as I ’m 
alive, the author immediately turns the tap on and the 
woman is over ears and head in slop before we’re two- 
thirds through the first act. And they’re not like that in 
real life, any more than we are. We aren’t continually 
making goo-goo eyes, nor are they. I’m going to write a 
play one of these days that will stagger the civilised world, 
I tell you! It’ll be bung full of women but it won’t have 
a word of slop from beginning to end I . . . ” 

‘‘It’ll be a failure,” said Ninian. 

“Oh, from the box-office point of view, no doubt! . . .” 

“No, from the common sense point of view. I’m on the 
side of Quinny in this matter, and I’m as much of an au- 
thority on women as you are, Gilbert. I’ve loved three 
different barmaids and a young woman in a tobacconist’s 
shop, and I say, what the hell is the good of talking all this 
rubbish about men and women trotting round as if male 
and female He had not created them. When I see a woman, 
if she’s got any femininity about her at all, I want to hug 
her and kiss her, and I do so, if I can, and so does any 
man if he is a man. I belong to the masculine gender 
and she belongs to the feminine . . . and that’s all there’s 
to be said about it. If we were neuters, we ’d be characters 
in your play, Gilbert. ...” 

“I don’t want to kiss every girl I meet,” said Gilbert. 

They howled at him in derision. “Oh, you liar!” said 
Henry, forgetting his anger. 

“You hug women all day long, you Mormon!” Ninian 
roared, “or you would if they’d let you!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


^16 


^‘That’s why you react so strongly from love in your 
plays/’ Eoger said judicially. “You can’t leave them 
alone in real life. ...” 

“I don’t mean to say I haven’t kissed a girl or two,’’ 
Gilbert admitted. 

“A girl or two! Listen to him ! ’ ’ Ninian went on. ‘ ‘ Oh, 
listen to the innocent babe and suckling. A girl or two! 
Look here, let’s make a census of ’em. What was the 
name of that girl whose brother got sent down? Lady 
Something? ...” 

“Lady Cecily! . . .” 

‘ ‘ Shut up ! ” Gilbert shouted at them, and his voice was 
full of rage. He stood over them, glaring at them 
fiercely. . . . 

“I say, Gilbert!” said Henry, “what’s up?” 

He recovered himself. “I’m sorry, ’ ’ he said. ‘ ‘ I didn ’t 
mean to lose my temper ! ’ ’ 

“That’s all right, Gilbert,” Ninian murmured. “It was 
my fault. I oughtn’t to have rotted you like that!” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Gilbert answered. 

5 

They were silent for a while, disconcerted by Gilbert’s 
strange outburst of anger, and for a few moments it seemed 
as if their argument must end now. Ninian began to yawn 
again, and he was about to propose once more that they 
should go to bed, when Gilbert resumed the discussion. 

“You make no allowance for reticence,” he said to 
Henry. “That’s what Roger really wants in politics . . . 
reticence!” 

“In everything,” Roger exclaimed 

“I know,” Gilbert went on. “When I first went in to 
the Daily Echo office, I saw a notice in the sub-editor’s 
room which tickled me to death. Elsden, the night editor, 
had put it up, and it said that the word ‘gutted’ was 
not to be used in describing the state of a house after a 


CHANGING WINDS 


ai7 

fire. I went to Elsden ... I like him better than any one 
else in the Echo office . . . and asked him what was the 
matter with the word. ‘Well, my dear chap,’ he said, 
‘think of guts! I mean to say. Guts! Hang it all, we 
must cover up something I ’ I thought he was being rather 
old-maidish then, but I’m not sure now that Elsden ’s point 
of view hasn’t got something behind it. He just wanted 
to be decently quiet about things that aren’t pretty! I 
don’t think it’s necessary to blurt out everything, and I’m 
certain that if you keep on washing your dirty linen in 
public, people will end up by thinking you’ve got nothing 
else but dirty linen. Your characters,” he added, turning 
to Henry, “go about, splashing in their emotions as if they 
were trick swimmers or ... or damn little journalists. I 
tell you, Quinny, love’s a private, furtive thing, a secret 
adventure, and open exposure of it is a sort of profan- 
ity. . . .” 

“No,” said Henry emphatically. “Love’s made nasty 
by secrecy!” He began to spread himself. He had been 
reading some of the authors of the Yellow Book period. 
“It seems to me,” he said, “that the marriage rite is 
broken, incomplete. In a healthy state, the whole function 
would be performed in public ... in ... in a cathedral, 
say. There ’d be a procession of priests in golden chasu- 
bles, and acolytes swinging carved censers, and boys with 
banners, and hidden choirs chanting long litanies. . . .” 

“I shall be sick in a minute!” said Gilbert. “You’re 
talking like an over-ripe Oscar Wilde, Quinny, and if you 
were really that sort of animal I’d have you hoofed out of 
this. Get out the whisky, Ninian, for the love of the Lordy 
God ! This aesthetic stuff makes my inside wobble ! ’ ’ 

Ninian went to the sideboard and took hold of the 
whisky bottle. “I don’t much like that sort of talk my- 
self,” he said. “It’s too clever-clever for my taste. I 
shouldn’t let it grow on me, Quinny, if I were you. You'll 
get a reputation like bad eggs, and people’ll think you’ve 
strayed out of your period and got lost. As a matter of 


218 


CHANGING WINDS 


fact, Gilbert, you don’t really want whisky, and you’re only 
going to drink it for effect, so you shan’t have any!” 

He returned to his seat, as he spoke, and sat down. 
Henry had a quick sense of shame. He had spoken insin- 
cerely, for effect ... in order to impress them with his 
cleverness, and their answer to him filled him with a sense 
of inferiority. He felt that they must despise him, and 
feeling that, he began to despise himself. 

‘‘My own feeling about these things,” said Ninian, “is 
perfectly simple. I believe in lust. I’m a lustful man 
myself, and so, I believe, is Roger! ...” 

‘ ‘ No, I ’m not, ’ ’ Roger exclaimed. 

“Well, I am,” Ninian proceeded. “Lust is the motor 
force of the world. ...” 

“No, it isn’t,” Gilbert interrupted. “The whole of civ- 
ilisation depends upon the human stomach. If men would 
live without eating . . . the whole of this society would 
dissolve. Lust is subordinate to the stomach, Ninian. 
You’ve never seen a starving man in a purple passion, have 
you ? ’ ’ 

Ninian leant forward and tapped the table with his 
knuckles. “I say that lust is the motor force of the 
world,” he said, “and I think you might let me finish 
my sentences, Gilbert. You are so eager to vent your own 
views that you won’t let any one else vent his. ...” 

“What’s the good of venting your views if they’re 
wrong, damn it!” said Gilbert. 

“Well, let me finish venting ’em anyhow. Assuming 
that I’m right, I say you should treat lust exactly as you 
treat the circulation of your blood: don’t fuss about it. 
It’s a natural function, neither beautiful nor ugly. It’s 
just there, and that’s all about it. The fellow who dithers 
about it as if he’d invented a new philosophy on the day he 
first slept with a woman, is a dirty, neurotic ass. So is the 
fellow who pretends that there’s no such thing as sex in 
the world. Male and female created He them, and I can 
tell you. He jolly well knew what He was up to!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


219 


Roger flicked the ash from his cigarette and coughed 
slightly. 

‘‘I think/ ^ he said, ‘‘we talk too much about these 
things. They pass the time, of course, but not very prof- 
itably. Whatever the Universal Motive may be ... I’m 
talking, of course, without prejudice . . . it’ll express it- 
self in complete disregard of our feelings and views. I have 
had no experience of women otherwise than in the capac- 
ity of a mother, several aunts, a nurse, a number of cous- 
ins, and also some waitresses in restaurants. ...” 

“Roger’s never kissed a woman in a sexual sense in his 
life,” Gilbert interrupted. 

“I have never seen the necessity of it,” Roger said. 

“But aren’t you curious to know what it’s like? After 
all, it’s a form of experience,” Henry asked, looking at 
Roger with curiosity. 

“Having scarlet fever is a form of experience, but I 
don’t wish to know what it’s like,” Roger answered. 

“My God, you are a prig, Roger!” said Gilbert simply. 

“I know that,” Roger answered. “That’s why I don’t 
get on with women. They find me out. No,” he contin- 
ued, “I’ve no experience of women in that way. I dare- 
say I shall get experience some day, but in the meantime, 
I’ve got my job to do. . , .” 

“We shall have a virgin Lord Chancellor on the wool- 
sack,” said Gilbert, “and then may God have mercy on all 
poor litigants!” 

“We really ought to go to bed,” Ninian protested. 

“Not yet,” Henry exclaimed. 

He had recovered from his feeling of dejection, and he 
was eager to retrieve the good opinion which he thought 
he had lost. 

“My own view,” he said, beginning as they always be- 
gan their oracular pronouncements, “my own view is that 
we make the mistake of thinking in masses instead of in in- 
dividuals. Everybody who tries to reform the world, 
tries to make it uniform, but what we want is the most 


220 


CHANGING WINDS 


complete diversity that’s obtainable. It’s the variations 
from type that make type bearable ! . . .” 

“That’s a good phrase, Quinny. Where ’d you get it 
from?” Gilbert interrupted. 

Henry flushed with pleasure. “I made it up,” he an- 
swered. “All men are different,” he went on, “and there- 
fore the morals that suit one person are unlikely to suit 
another person. Roger doesn’t bother about women. He 
looks upon them as a ... a sideline. Don’t you, Roger? 
He’ll marry in due course, and he’ll have one woman, and 
he’ll have her all to himself. Won’t you, Roger?” 

“Probably,” Roger replied, “but there’s no certainty 
about these things.” 

Henry proceeded. “Gilbert wants lots and lots of 
women, but he doesn’t want to talk about it, and he wants 
to keep his women and his work separate ... in water- 
tight compartments, as it were. As if you could do that! 
And Ninian wants to have a good old hearty coarse time 
like . . . like Tom Jones . . . and then he’ll repent and 
praise God and lay his stick about the backsides of all the 
young sinners he meets ! ’ ’ 

“No, I don’t, ...” said Ninian, but Henry, having 
started, would not let himself be interrupted. “I want to 
have lots and lots of women, ’ ’ he went on hurriedly, ‘ ‘ but I 
don’t care who knows about them. I like talking about my 
love-affairs. ...” 

“Well, why don’t you talk about ’em?” Gilbert de- 
manded. 

Henry was nonplussed. His speech became hesitant. 
“I ... I said I’d like to talk about them,” he replied. 
“I didn’t say I would do so. . . .” He hurried away 
from the subject. “But chiefly,” he said, “I don’t want 
anything permanent in my life. Now, do you understand ? 
Roger’s like the Rock of Ages . . . the same yesterday, 
to-day and forever, but I want to be different to-morrow 
from what I am to-day, and different again the day after. 
Endless variety for me ! ” 


CHANGING WINDS 


221 


‘Htll be an awful lot of trouble/’ said Gilbert. 

‘ ‘ That doesn ’t matter. Now my argument is that I have 
a different nature from Roger and all of you, but I’m not 
a worse man than any of you are. ...” 

“No, no, of course not,” they asserted. 

“I’m just different, that’s all. The man who loves one 
woman and cleaves to her until death do them part isn’t a 
better man or a worse man than the chap who loves a dif- 
ferent woman every year, and doesn ’t cleave to any of them. 
He’s just different. You see,” he continued, pleased with 
the way he was enunciating his opinions, “we are of all 
sorts. There are lustful men and there are men who have 
scarcely any sex impulse at all, and there are coarse men 
and refined men, and . . . and all sorts of men, and they ’re 
all necessary to the world. I say, why not recognise the 
differences between them and leave it at that? It’s silly 
to try and fit us all with the same system of morals when 
nobody but a fool would try to fit us all with the same size 
hat!” 

“You don’t make any allowance for the views of 
women,” Roger said. 

“Oh, yes, I do,” Henry retorted quickly. “There is as 
much variety among women as there is among men. Some 
of them are monogamous and some aren’t. That’s all!” 

Gilbert stretched his legs out in front of him and then 
drew them back again. “Our little Quinny’s got this 
world neatly parcelled out,” he said. “Hasn’t he, coves? 
There he sits, like a little Jehovah, handing out natures as 
if they were school-prizes. ‘ Here, my little lad, here ’s your 
set of morals. Now, run away and make a hog of yourself 
with the women ! ’ ‘ Here, my little lad, here ’s your set of 

morals. Now, run away and be a bally monk!’ ” 

“Exactly!” said Henry. “That’s my view!” 

“Well, all I can say,” said Ninian, “is that it won’t do. 
This may be a tom-fool sort of a world, but it gets along 
in its tom-fool way a lot better than it will in your neat 
arrangement of things. ...” 


222 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘Besides/’ Roger said, taking up the argument from 
Ninian, “there is a common measure in life. Oh, I know 
quite well that there are differences between man and man, 
but there are resemblances, too, and what we’ve got to do 
. . . the Improved Tories, I mean ... is to discover which 
is the more important, the resemblances of men or the dif- 
ferences of men. As a lawyer, of course, I only know 
what’s in my brief, but as a man, I’m interested!” 

“The question is,” said Gilbert, “are women a damned 
nuisance that ought to be put down, or are they not? I 
say they are, but I like ’em all the same, and that only 
shows what a blasted hole I ’m in. I like kissing them . . . 
it’s no good pretending that I don’t. ...” 

“Not a bit,” said Ninian. 

“And I kiss ’em whenever I get a chance,” Gilbert con- 
tinued, “but all the same I’d like to be a whopping big 
icicle so as to be able to ignore ’em . . . like Roger 1 ’ ’ 
Ninian got up, resolved on going to bed. “Come on,” he 
said, stretching himself. “Our jaw about women doesn’t 
appear to have solved anything ! ’ ’ 

“It never will,” Roger answered, rising too. “We shall 
still be jawing about them this day twelvemonth. ...” 
“DV.,” said Gilbert. 

‘ ‘ But we won ’t get any f orrarder 1 ’ ’ 

“Rum things, women!” said Ninian, moving towards the 
door, ‘ ‘ but very nice . . . very nice, indeed ! ’ ’ 

“My goodness me, I am tired,” Gilbert yawned. “Oh, 
so tired! But we’ve settled everything, haven’t we? The* 
empire and women and so on? Great Scott,” he exclaimed, * 
“we forgot to say anything about God!” 

“So we did,” said Ninian, and he turned back from the 
door. 

“The Improved Tories really ought to make up their 
minds about religion,” Gilbert went on. 

“Can’t we leave that until to-morrow?” Roger com- 
plained. “We needn’t talk about Him to-night, need we? 
I’m frightfully sleepy! ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


2 ^ 


6 

While Henry was undressing, he remembered how angry 
Gilbert had been with Ninian and Roger because they had 
mentioned the name of a girl for whom he had cared. 

‘ ^ Awfully rum, that ! ’ ’ he said to himself, sitting on the 
edge of his bed. 

He tried to recall her name. ‘‘Lady something!^’ he 
said, and then said several times, “Lady . . . Lady . . . 
Lady! . . in the hope that the name would follow. But 
he could not remember it. 

“Odd that I never heard of her before.” 

He put on his dressing-gown, and opened the door of his 
room. “Ill ask old Ninian,” he said, as he went out. 

Ninian, who had been yawning so heavily downstairs, 
was now sitting up in bed, reading a copy of the Engineer. 

“Hilloa,” he exclaimed as Henry entered the room in 
response to his “Come in!” 

“I say, Ninian, what was the name of the girl that Gil- 
bert was so gone on at Cambridge ? Lady something or other ! 
He was rather sick with you for mentioning her. ...” 

“Oh, Lady Cecily Jayne!” 

‘ ‘ Is that her name ? Who is she ? ’ ’ 

“Society female,” said Ninian. “Takes an interest in 
literature and art in her spare time, but she doesnl know 
anything about either of them. Her brother was in our 
college until he got sent down. That was how Gilbert met 
her. She came up one May week and made eyes at Gil- 
bert. She wasn^t married then! ...” 

“Is she married?” Henry interrupted. 

“Oh, yes. She used to be Lady Cecily Blandgate . . . 
her father ^s the Earl of Bucklersbury. She^s a big fe- 
male. ...” 

“What do you mean? Fat?” 

“No. Tall,” said Ninian. 

“Is she good-looking?” 

“Yes, she is, and rather amusing, too, in a footling sort 




CHANGING WINDS 


of way. She’s got a fearful appetite, and she thinks of 
herself all day long. I know because she damn near ruined 
me over cream buns once.” 

‘ ‘ I suppose Gilbert was in love with her ? . . . ” 

‘‘I suppose so. He didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask, but 
he mooned about with her and looked awfully sloppy when 
he passed her things. You know what I mean. He’d 
hand her a plate of bread and butter, and look at her as 
much as to say, ‘This is really my heart I’m handing 
you ! ’ I never saw a chap look such an ass ! ” 

“Has she been married very long?” 

“Oh, a year or two. I don’t know. I’m not very in- 
terested in her. Too much of a female for my taste. Ex- 
tremely entertaining in the evening and the afternoon, but 
awfully boring in the morning ! . . . ” 

‘ ‘ Sounds like sour grapes, Ninian ! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Oh, I ’ve been in love with her if that ’s what you mean. 
We. all were, even old Eoger. In fact, I kissed her once 
... or was it twice ? She ’s the sort of woman a chap does 
kiss somehow. I couldn’t think of anything else to do when 
I was with her. That’s why she’s so dull. She splashes 
her sex about as if she were distributing handbills. I’m 
surprised that you don’t know her. She’s a very well- 
known female. . . .” 

“I’ve been in Ireland, Ninian. ...” 

“So you have. I’d forgotten that. Of course, if you 
will live in a place like that, you can’t expect to be fa- 
miliar with the wonders of civilisation. Ever see the 
Daily B e flexion ” 

“Oh, yes, we get that in Ireland all right!” 

“Do you, indeed! Well, praise God from Whom all 
blessings flow. If you buy a copy of to-morrow’s Daily 
Deflexion^ you’ll probably see her photograph in it, or a 
paragraph about her. Roger says people pay to have them- 
selves mentioned once a month in that sort of rag ! ’ ’ 
“What’s her husband like?” Henry asked. 

“God made him, but nobody knows why. I believe 


CHANGING WINDS 


225 


chorus girls call him ‘Chummie/ That’s his purpose in 
life. I say, Henry, there ’s a ripping sketch of a new kind 
of engine in this paper. I wish you’d let me explain it 
to you. . . .” 

“Who is her husband?” said Henry. 

‘ ^ Who is who ’s husband ? ’ ’ 

“Lady Cecily Jayne’s ! ...” 

“Lordy God, man, you’re not talking about her still, are 
you? Her husband is . . . let me see . . . oh, yes, he’s 
Lord Jasper Jayne. His name sounds like the hero of a 
servant’s novelette, but he doesn’t look like that. He looks 
like a chucker-out in a back-street pub. His father’s the 
Marquis of Dulbury. He’s the second son. The eldest is 
sillier, but it’s all been hushed up. Anything else you 
want to know?” 

“I’m just interested, that’s all!” 

“Her brother ... I told you, didn’t I? . . . was at 
Cambridge with us. He came down a year before we did. 
As a matter of fact, he was sent down and told to stay 
down. He ducked a proctor in a water-butt and the dons 
were very cross about it. He’s not a bad fellow. I think 
we’ll ask him round here one evening. Lady Cecily’s very 
fond of him . . . she used to come up to Cambridge to see 
him . . . before the affair with the proctor, of course . . . 
and Gilbert and I took her and another female out in a 
punt once!” 

Henry, who had been sittting in an arm-chair while Nin- 
ian told him about Lady Cecily Jayne, got up and walked 
across the room. 

‘ ‘ Gilbert was very upset when you mentioned her name, ’ ’ 
he said. ‘ ‘ I suppose her marriage was a blow to him ? ’ ’ 

“Oh, I don’t know. Look here, Quinny, if you’re going 
to jaw any more about this female, you can just hop off to 
your own room, but if you’d like to hear me explaining 
these diagrams to you, you can stay. ...” 

“Do you ever see Lady Cecily now?” Henry asked, ig- 
noring what Ninian had said. 


226 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Now and again. Gilbert sees her quite often. . . .’^ 

“Does he?’’ Henry said eagerly. 

“Yes. At first nights. She goes to the theatre a lot. 
Do you want to meet her ? ’ ’ 

There was some confusion in Henry’s voice as he an- 
swered, “I should like to meet her. You see, I’ve never 
known a really beautiful woman. ...” 

“Aren’t there any in Ireland?” 

“Oh, yes. Plenty. Peasant girls, particularly!” He 
thought for a moment or two of Sheila Morgan, and then 
hurriedly went on. “But I’ve never known a really beau- 
tiful woman. You see, Ninian, ours is a fairly lonely sort 
of house, and I’ve spent most of my time either there or 
at T.C.D. or at Rumpell’s, and somehow I’ve never got to 
know any one. ...” 

“Well, you’d better ask Gilbert to take you with him to a 
first-night. She’s sure to be there, and you can ask him 
to introduce you to her. And now, you can hoof out, 
young fellow! ...” 

Henry went back to his own room and got into bed, but 
he did not sleep until the dawn began to break. His 
thoughts wandered vaguely about his mind, bumping up 
against one recollection and then against another. He re- 
membered Sheila Morgan and the bright look in her eyes 
that evening when she had hurriedly come into the Lan- 
guage class out of the rain . . . and while he was remem- 
bering Sheila, he found himself thinking of Mary Graham 
and the way in which she would put up her hand and throw 
her long hair from her shoulders. Then came memories of 
Bridget Fallon . . . and almost mechanically he began to 
murmur a prayer to the Virgin. “Hail Mary, full of 
grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among 
women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus! . . .” 

He turned over on his side, pulling the bedclothes more 
closely about him. “Cecily Jayne,” he murmured in a 
sleepy voice. “What a pretty name, that is!” 


THE FOURTH CHAPTER 


1 

Their days were spent in work. Ninian and Roger left 
the house soon after nine o’clock, Ninian to go to the office 
of his engineering firm in Victoria Street, Roger to go to 
his chambers in the Temple, leaving Henry and Gilbert to 
work at home. In the evening, provided that there was not 
a “first-night” to call Gilbert to the theatre, they talked 
of themselves and of their future. Their egotism was un- 
disguised. They had set their minds on a high destiny and 
were certain that they would achieve it, so they did not 
waste any energy, as Gilbert once said, in pretending that 
they were not remarkably able. In a short time, they 
gathered a group of friends about them who were, they 
thought, likely to work well and ably, and it became the 
custom for their friends to visit them on Thursday even- 
ing. Gilbert began the custom of asking some one to dine 
with them on Thursday, and the guest was expected to ac- 
count for himself to the group that assembled after dinner. 
The Improved Tories, according to Gilbert, wanted heart- 
to-heart talks from people of experience. If a guest 
treated them to flummery, they let him know that they 
despised his flummery and insisted on asking him ques- 
tions of a peculiarly intimate character. There were less 
than a dozen people in the group, apart from Roger and 
Ninian and Gilbert and Henry, but each of them had dis- 
tinguished himself in some fashion at his college. Hilary 
Cornwall had taken so many prizes and scholarships that 
he had lost count of them, and when he entered the Co- 
lonial Office, it became a commonplace to say of him that 
he was destined to become Permanent Under-Secretary 

227 


CHANGING WINDS 


at a remarkably youthful age. Gerald Luke had produced 
two little books of poetry of such quality that people be- 
lieved that he was in the line of great tradition. Ernest 
Carr had edited Granta so ably that he was invited to join 
the staff of the Times. Then there were Ashley Earls, who 
had had a play produced by the Stage Society, and Peter 
Crooks, the chemist, and Edward Allen, who was private 
secretary to a Cabinet Minister, and Goeffrey Grant, an- 
other journalist, and Clifford Dartrey, who spent his time 
in research work and had already produced a book on 
Casual Labour in the Building Trades in return for the 
Shaw Prize at the London School of Economics. 

They called themselves the Improved Tories, although 
most of them would have voted at an election for any one 
but a Conservative candidate. Ashley Earls and Gerald 
Luke were Socialists and had only consented to join the 
group because they were told that the purpose of it was 
less political than sociological. 

“You see,’^ Gilbert said to them, “it isn’t good for Eng- 
land to have a Tory Party so dense as this one is, and 
you’ll really be doing useful work if you help to improve 
their quality. What is the good of an Opposition which 
can do nothing but oppose? Look at that fellow. Sir 
Frederick Banbury ! What in the name of God is the good 
of a man like that? He doesn’t make anything ... he 
just gets in the way. Of course, that’s useful . . . but he 
doesn’t know when to get out of the way . . . which is 
much more useful. And there ought to be people who 
aren’t content either to get in the way or just get out of 
it . . . there ought to be people who can shove things along. 
But there aren’t . . . except Balfour, and he’s getting old 
and anyhow he hasn’t got much health. You see what I 
mean, don’t you? There ought to be a strong Opposition, 
otherwise the Liberals will develop fatty degeneration of 
the political sense. . . . The trouble with a lot of these 
fellows is that they believe that twaddle that Lord Kan- 
dolph Churchill talked about the duty of an Opposition 


CHANGING WINDS 


229 


being to oppose. Of course it isn’t. The duty of the Op- 
position is to criticise and to improve, if they can. ...” 

And so Ashley Earls and Gerald Luke joined the group 
of Improved Tories, not as members, but as critics. It was 
they who induced the others to join the Fabian Society. 
“You can become subscribers . . . that won’t commit you 
to anything . . . and then you’ll be able to attend all the 
meetings and get all the publications. It’ll be good for 
you! ...” 

The supply of political guests was not of the quality 
they desired. The eminent politicians were either too busy 
or too scornful to accept their invitations. F. E. Kobinson 
was impertinent to them until he heard that Mr. Balfour 
was interested in their proceedings . . . had even asked 
to be introduced to Roger Carey . . . and then he offered 
to address them on Young Toryism, but they told him that 
they did not now wish to hear him. They had taken Rob- 
inson’s measure very quickly. “Police-court lawyer!” 
they said, and ceased to trouble about him. Mr. Balfour 
never attended the group, but they consoled themselves to 
some extent by reading his book on Decadence and arguing 
about it among themselves. If, however, they were not able 
to secure many of the Eminent Ones, th^y were able to 
secure plenty of the Semi-Eminent, far more than they 
wanted, and for half a year, they listened to politicians of 
all sorts. Old Tories and Young Tories, Liberal Imperial- 
ists and Radicals, Fabian Socialists and Social Democrats, 
heckling them and being heckled by them. At the end of 
that six months, Gilbert revolted against politicians. 

“These aren’t the people who really matter,” he said. 
“They don’t start things. We want to get hold of the 
people with new ideas ... the men who begin movements 
and the men who aren’t always wondering what their con- 
stituents will say if they hear about it ! ” 

Then followed a term with men who might have been 
called cranks. Bernard Shaw declined to dine with them 
. . . he preferred to eat at home. . . . “Voluptuous vege- 


^30 


CHANGING WINDS 


tarian!’^ said Gilbert . . . but he talked to them for an 
hour on “Equality’^ and tried to persuade them to advo- 
cate equal incomes for all, asserting that this was desir- 
able from every point of view, biological, social and eco- 
nomic. Following Bernard Shaw, came Edward Carpen- 
ter, very gentle and very gracious, denouncing modern civ- 
ilisation in words which were spoken quietly, but which, 
in print, read like a thunderstorm. Alfred Kussell Wal- 
lace, whom they invited to talk on Evolution, came and 
talked instead on the nationalisation of land. He sat, hud- 
dled in a chair, very old and very bright, with eyes that 
sparkled behind his glasses . . . and suddenly, in the mid- 
dle of his discourse on land, he informed them that he had 
positive proof of the existence of angels. “My God, hell 
want to make civil servants of ’em ! ’ ’ Gilbert whispered to 
Henry. . . . Sir Horace Plunkett dined with them one 
night, eating so little that he scarcely seemed to eat at all, 
and he preached the whole gospel of co-operation. It was 
through him that they got hold of an agricultural genius 
called T. Wibberley, an English-Irishman, who reorganised 
the entire farming system on a basis of continuous crop- 
ping inside an hour and ten minutes.. Wibberley knew 
Henry’s father, and for the first time in his life Henry 
learned that Mr. Quinn’s agricultural experiments were of 
value. . . . Then came H. G. Wells, smiling and very dep- 
recating and almost inarticulate, to tell them of the enor- 
mous impol?ance of the novelist. They got him into a cor- 
ner of the room, when he had finished reading his paper, 
and persuaded him to make caricatures of them . . . and 
while he was making the caricatures, he talked to them far 
more brilliantly than he had read to them. G. K. Chester- 
ton and Hilaire Belloc came to lecture and stayed to drink. 
Chesterton’s lecture would have been funny, they agreed, 
if they had been able to hear it, but he laughed so heartily 
at his jokes, as he, so to speak, saw them approaching, that 
he forgot to make them. His. method of speech was a mix- 
ture of giggle and whisper. “ Chuckle-and-squeak ! ” Gil- 


CHANGING WINDS 


^31 


bert called it. Belloc whispered dark things about Influ- 
ential Families and Hebrews and seemed to think that a 
man who changed his name only did so with the very worst 
intentions. He and Chesterton said harsh things about 
the Party System, and they babbled beatifically about the 
Catholic Church. . . . ^‘Two big men like that gabbling 
like a couple of priest-smitten flappers!^’ said Gilbert in 
disgust as he listened to them. “Them and their Cathlik 
Church ! ” he added, imitating Belloc way of pronouncing 
the word “Catholic.” Mouldy, grovelling, fat Papists! he 
called them, and vowed that he would resign from the Im- 
proved Tories if any more of that sort were asked to ad- 
dress them. That was because some one had suggested 
that Cecil Chesterton should also be invited to dine with 
them. “ He ’s simply Belloc 's echo, ’ ^ Gilbert protested. ‘ ‘ I 
should feel as if I were listening to his master ^s voice. 
Besides, he’s fatter than Belloc and he’s a damned jiggery- 
pokery Papist too! Why don’t these chaps go and cover 
themselves with blue woad and play mumbo- jumbo tricks 
before the village idol! That ’ud be about as intelligent 
as their Popery ! ’ ’ They intended to ask Lord Hugh Cecil 
to talk to them about Conservatism, but when they read his 
book on the subject they decided that such a Conservative 
was utterly damnable . . . and so they asked his brother. 
Lord Robert, instead, and found that his point of view, 
although much more human and less logical than that of 
Lord Hugh, was antipathetic to theirs. 

“Let’s get Garvin!” Gilbert suggested, when they dis- 
cussed the question of a more improved Tory than Lord 
Robert. “The Cecils are no good . . . they’re too super- 
stitious!” which was his way of saying that they were too 
religious. “They’re worse than priests: they’re . . . 
they’re laymen! I propose that we ask Garvin to come 
and talk to us. He seems to be shoving the Tories all over 
the place!” So they invited the editor of the Observer 
to dine and talk with them, and he came, a quick, eager, 
intense man, with large, starting eyes, who spoke so quickly 


2S2 


CHANGING WINDS 


that his words became entangled and were wrecked on his 
teeth. They liked him, but they were dubious of his right 
to represent the Tory spirit. It seemed to them that this 
eager, thrusting-forward man, who banged the table in 
his earnestness, might carry a political party off its feet in 
his passion, but they were afraid that the feet would trail, 
that the party would be reluctant to be lifted. ‘‘He’s 
Irish,” said Roger in judgment. 

‘ ‘ It isn ’t any good, ’ ’ Gilbert remarked, when Garvin had 
gone home, “trying to persuade the English to spread their 
wings. They haven’t got any. Garvin ’ud do better if 
he ’d hold a carrot in front of them . . . they ’d follow that. 
Quinny,” he added, “you ought to ask Garvin for a job on 
the Observer. They say he can’t resist an Irishman!” 

“I will,” Henry replied. 

“Oh, and there’s a chance of doing book reviews on the 
Morning Report!’^ Geoffrey Grant said. “I told Leonard, 
the literary editor, about you, and he said he’d look at you 
if you went round one day ! ’ ’ 

“I’ll go and look at him,” Henry answered. 

2 

While they were spending their evenings in this fashion, 
Henry, working steadily in the mornings, completely re- 
vised his novel. Gilbert, working less steadily than Henry, 
finished a new comedy and sent it to Sir Goeffrey Mun- 
dane, the manager of the Pall Mall Theatre, who utterly 
astounded Gilbert by accepting it. 

“Quinny!” he shouted, running up to Henry’s room 
with the letter which had been delivered by the mid-day 
post, “Mundane’s accepted ‘The Magic Casement’!” 

“What’s that?” said Henry, turning round from his 
desk. 

“He’s accepted it, Quinny! I always said he was a 
damned good actor, and so he is. My Lord, this is rip- 
ping! He says it’s a splendid comedy ... so it is ... (w 


CHANGING WINDS 


233 


good as Oscar Wilde at his hest . . . oh, better, damn it, 
better . . . and will I please come and see him on Friday 
morning at eleven o^ clock . . . I’ll be there before he’s out 
of bed! ... I say, Quinny, we ought to do something, 
ought ’nt we? Is it the correct thing to get drunk on these 
occasions ? ’ ’ 

His joy was so extravagant that Henry felt many years 
older than Gilbert, and he patted him paternally on the 
shoulder and told him to develop the stoic virtues. 

“I’m most frightfully pleased, Gilbert!” he said, when 
he had done with the paternal manner. “When’s he going 
to put the play on?” 

*’ ‘ He doesn ’t say. The thing he ’s doing now is no damn 
good, and he’ll probably take it off soon. Perhaps he’ll 
produce ‘The Magic Casement’ after that. Quinny, it is 
a good play, isn’t it? Sometimes I get a most shocking 
hump about things, and I think I’m no good at all. . . .” 

“Of course, it’s a good play, Gilbert! ...” 

“Yes, but is it good enough?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t suppose anything ever is. I 
thought ‘Drusilla’ was a great book until my father read it, 
and then I thought it was rubbish. ...” 

“It wasn’t rubbish, Quinny, and the revised version is 
really good.” 

“I think that, too, but sometimes I’m not sure!” 

“Isn’t it damnable, Quinny, this job of writing? You 
never get any satisfaction out of it. I’d like to make 
cheeses ... I’m sure people who make cheeses feel that 
they’ve just made the very best cheese that can be made . . . 
but I’m always seeing something in my work that might 
have been done better.” 

Henry nodded his head. “I suppose,” he said, “it’ll 
always be like that. I think,” he went on, “Malden is go- 
ing to take my novel. I saw Redder yesterday! . . .” 
Redder was his agent . . . “and he says Malden’s the like- 
liest person. I shan’t get much. Forty or fifty pounds 
on account of royalties, but it’s a start!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


^34 

“The great thing, said Gilbert, “is to get into print. 
I wonder how much I’ll make out of my play!” 

“More than I shall make out of my novel,” Henry an- 
swered. His talks with Mr. Redder had modified Henry’s 
ideas of the profits made by novelists. 

Gilbert started up from the low chair into which he 
had thrown himself. “I’m going to start on another play 
this minute!” he said. “My head’s simply humming 
with ideas ! ” He stopped half way to the door, and turned 
towards Henry again. “You were working when I came 
in,” he said. “What are you doing?” 

“I’ve started another novel,” Henry answered. 

“Oh! Done much of it?” 

“No, only the title. I’m ealling it ‘Broken Spears.’ ” 

“Damn good title, too,” said Gilbert. 


3 

The book was published long before Gilbert’s play was 
produced; for Sir Geoffrey Mundane had taken fright at 
Gilbert’s play. He was afraid that it was too clever, too 
original, too much above their heads, and so forth. “I’d 
like to produee it,” he said. “I’d regard it as an honour 
to be allowed to produce it, but the Pall Mall is a very 
expensive theatre to maintain and I don ’t mind telling you, 
Mr. Farlow, that I lost money on that last pieee, too much 
money, and I must retrieve some of it. Your play is ex- 
cellent . . . excellent ... in fact, it’s a piece of litera- 
ture . . . almost Greek in its form . . . Greek . . . yes, I 
think, Greek . . . remarkable plays those were, weren’t 
they? . . . Have you seen this portrait of me in to-day’s 
Daily Reflexion , . . quite jolly, I think . . . but it won’t 
be popular, Mr. Farlow, and I must put on something that 
is likely to be popular!” 

Gilbert found Sir Geoffrey’s sudden changes of conver- 
sation curiously interesting, but the hint of disaster to 


CHANGING WINDS 


235 


‘‘The Magic Casement’^ disturbed him too much to let his 
interest absorb him. 

“Then youVe decided not to do the play?’^ he said, with 
a throb of disappointment in his voice. 

Sir Geoffrey rose at him, fixing his eye-glass, and patted 
him on the shoulder. “No, no,^’ he said. “I didn’t mean 
that. I’ll produce the play gladly . . . some day . . . 
but not just at present. If you care to leave it with 
me. . . 

Gilbert wondered what he ought to say next. Sir Geof- 
frey might retain the play for a year or two, and then de- 
cide that he could not produce it. 

“Perhaps,” he said, “you’d undertake to do it within 
a certain time. ...” He wanted to add that Sir Geoffrey 
should undertake to pay a fine if he failed to produce the 
play within the “certain time,” but his courage was not 
strong enough. He was afraid that Sir Geoffrey might be 
offended by the suggestion and return the play at once. 
He wished that he had gone to Mr. Redder, as Henry had 
done, and asked him to place the play for him. “ Redder ’d 
stand no humbug,” he said to himself. 

Sir Geoffrey murmured something about the undesira- 
bility of committing oneself, and added that Gilbert should 
be content to wait for a year without any legal undertaking. 
“Of course,” he said magnanimously, “if you can place 
the play elsewhere, don’t let me stand in your way!” but 
Gilbert, alarmed, hurriedly said that he would be glad to 
leave the play with him for the time he mentioned. “I’d 
like you to take the part of Rupert Westlake,” he said. “I 
don’t think any one could play it so well as you could!” 
and Sir Geoffrey, still responsive to flattery, smiled and 
said he would be delighted to create the part. 

The play which he produced instead of “The Magic 
Casement” ran for six weeks, bringing neither profit nor 
honour to Sir Geoffrey, who began to lose his head, with the 
result that he produced another play which was a greater 
failure than its predecessor. Then came a revival of an 


236 


CHANGING WINDS 


old play which had a moderate amount of success, and 
“I’ll do your play next,” he said to Gilbert. “I shall 
certainly do your play next !” 

It was because of these delays in the production of ‘ ‘ The 
Magic Casement” that Henry’s novel, “Drusilla,” was pub- 
lished much earlier than the play was performed. He 
had rewritten it so extensively that it was almost a new 
novel, very different from the manuscript which his father 
had read, and it received a fair number of reviews. The 
critics whose judgment he valued, praised it liberally, but 
the critics whose judgment he despised, either damned it 
or ignored it. Gilbert said it was splendid. “There’s 
still some Slop in it,” he said, “but it’s miles better than 
the first version.” Koger liked it. He said, “I like it, 
Quinny!” and that was all, but Henry knew that his 
speech was considerable praise. Ninian’s praise was ex- 
travagant, and he was almost like a child in his pleasure at 
receiving an inscribed copy from Henry. He spent the 
better part of an afternoon in going to bookshops and ask- 
ing the grossly ignorant assistants why they had not got 
“Drusilla” prominently placed in the window. The as- 
sistants were not humiliated by his charge of gross igno- 
rance, nor were they impressed by his statement that the 
Times Literary Supplement had described the book as ‘ ‘ re- 
markable.” So many remarkable books are published in 
the course of a season that the assistants do not attempt to 
remember them ; and so many friends of remarkable young 
authors wish to know why the works of these remarkable 
young men are not stacked in the window that the assist- 
ants have learned to look listlessly at the people who make 
the demands. Ninian bought three copies of the novel, and 
sent one to his mother and one to the Headmaster of Rum- 
pell’s and one to his uncle, the Dean of Exebury. “That 
ought to help the sales, Quinny!” he said. “I bought ’em 
in three different shops, and I stuffed the chaps that I’d 
been to other places to get it, but found they were sold 
out!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


m 


“That’ll make two copies Mrs. Gjaham’ll have,” Henry 
replied. “I’ve sent one to her to-day. ...” 

“Well, she can give the other one to Mary,” said Ninian. 

The book was not a success. Including the number sold 
to the libraries, only three hundred and seventy-five copies 
were sold, but the financial failure of the book did not 
greatly depress Henry, for he had the praise of his friends 
to console him. His father’s letter had heartened him 
almost as much as the review in the Times. great 

stuff,’’ he wrote, “and I’m proud of you. I didn’t think 
you could improve it so much as you have done. Hurry 
up and do another one!” 

His second book, “Broken Spears,” was in proof before 
Sir Geoffrey Mundane decided to produce “The Magic 
Casement,” and for a while he was at a loose end. He 
could not think of a subject for another story, although he 
had invented a good title : Turbulence. He sat at his desk, 
forcing himself to write chapters that ended ingloriously. 
He wrote pages and pages, and in the evening threw them 
into the wastepaper basket. “My God,” he said to him- 
self one morning, when he had been sitting at his desk 
for over an hour without writing a word, “I believe I’ve 
lost the power to write ! ’ ’ 

He got up, terrified, and went to Gilbert’s room. 

“Hilloa, bloke!” said Gilbert, looking round at him as 
he entered. 

“Are you busy, Gilbert?” he asked. 

“I’m kidding myself that I am, but between ourselves, 
Quinny, I’m reading Gerald Luke’s last book. That 
chap’s a poet. He’s as good as Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 
Listen to this! ...” 

But Henry did not wish to listen to Gerald Luke ’s poems. 

“Gilbert,” he said, “I believe I’m done!” 

“Done?” Gilbert exclaimed, putting down the book of 
poems. 

“Yes. I don’t believe I shall ever do another book. . . .” 

“Silly ass!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


“I can^t think of anything. My mind’s like pap. I 
keep on writing and writing, but I only get a pile of words. 
That was bad enough, but to-day I can’t write at all. I 
simply can’t write. ...” 

“Haven’t you got a theme?” 

“Vaguely, yes, but the thing won’t come to life. The 
people lie about like logs, and . . . damn them, they won’t 
move ! ’ ’ 

“Look here,” said Gilbert, “I’m tired of work. Let’s 
chuck it for a while. You’re obviously off colour, and a 
holiday’ll do you good. Let’s go out somewhere for the 
day anyhow. I’ve a first night this evening. We’ll wind 
up with that!” 

“What’s the play?” Henry asked. 

“A revival. They’re bringing Wilde’s ‘The Ideal Hus- 
band’ on at the St. James’s again,” Gilbert answered. 
“Alexander’s very good in it. . . .” 

“That’s the fashionable theatre, isn’t it?” 

Henry’s knowledge of London was still very limited, and 
he seldom visited the theatre, chiefly because Gilbert, who 
had to visit them all, spoke of the English drama with con- 
tempt. 

“Yes,” Gilbert replied. “All the Jews and dukes go 
there. Suppose we go for a row on the Serpentine, 
Quinny? You can pull the oars for an hour. It’ll do you 
no end of good, and I’ll lie in the bottom of the boat and 
watch you. That’ll do me no end of good. Come on, 
let’s get out of this!” 


4 

They came away from the boathouse, and as they walked 
towards Hyde Park Corner, a motor-car drove slowly past 
them. 

“Who’s that?” said Henry, as Gilbert raised his hat to 
the lady who was seated in the car. 

“Lady Cecily Jayne,” Gilbert answered. 


CHANGING WINDS 


239 


‘‘Oh! . . . She’s very beautiful.’’ 

“Think so?” 

“Yes.” 

“I’ll introduce you to her to-night. She’s certain to be 
at the theatre. We ought to make certain of getting a 
ticket for you, Quinny. Let’s go down to the theatre and 
book a seat.” 

They came out of the Park and walked down Piccadilly 
to St. James’s Street and presently turned the corner of 
the street in which the theatre is situated. Henry was able 
to secure a stall, but it was not next to Gilbert’s. It was in 
the last row. 

“Never mind,” said Gilbert, “we can meet between the 
acts. My seat’s at the end of a row, and you can easily 
get out of yours. If Cecily’s in a box, she’ll probably ask 
us to stay in it. She likes to have people about her!” 

Henry wanted to talk about Lady Cecily to Gilbert, but 
the tone of his voice as he said, “She likes to have people 
about her I ’ ’ prevented him from doing so. It was odd, he 
reflected, that Gilbert had never confided in him about her, 
odder still that there had been no talk of her in the Blooms- 
bury house since the night on which Henry and Ninian had 
discussed Gilbert’s outburst of anger when her name was 
mentioned. Gilbert could be very secretive, Henry 
thought. . . . 

“She’s very beautiful,” he said aloud. 

Gilbert nodded his head. 

“Very beautiful!” Henry repeated. 

“You’re an impressionable young fellow, Quinny!” said 
Gilbert. “I won’t call you ‘sloppy’ again because I’m 
tired of telling you that, but really that’s what you are. 
You’ve only got to see a beautiful woman for a couple of 
seconds and you start buzzing round her like a bumble bee. 
Of course, I’m sloppy myself. We’re all sloppy. Damn 
it, here we are, two healthy young fellows who ought to be 
working hard, and we’re wasting a fine morning in gab- 
bling about women. ...” 


240 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Not women, Gilbert! Lady Cecily! . . 

“Lady Cecily! Lady Cecily! ...” He stopped sud- 
denly and turned to Henry. “I suppose you know about 
her and me?” he said. 

“Very little,” Henry answered. 

“Let’s have some tea. We’ll go in here !” The abrupt 
change disconcerted Henry for a moment or two, but he 
followed Gilbert into the tea-shop. 

“I can see you’re ready to fall in love with her,” Gil- 
bert said, as they drank their tea. 

“Don’t be an old ass!” Henry replied, feeling confused. 

“She’ll ask you to come and see her, and you’ll waste 
a lot of time next week trying to meet her. . . ' 

Henry laughed nervously. “You’re rather ridiculous, 
Gilbert,” he said. “I’ve never seen Lady Cecily before. 
I’m just interested in her because she’s so beautiful. 
That’s natural enough, isn’t it?” 

“Oh, yes, it’s natural enough, and Lady Cecily will like 
your interest in her beauty!” 

The bitterness of his tone was remarkable. Henry felt, 
as he listened to him, that there were open wounds. . . . 

“Don’t call her Cecily until you’ve known her two 
days, ’ ’ Gilbert went on. ‘ ‘ She ’s very particular about that 
sort of thing. And don’t fall too much in love. It’ll take 
you longer to get over it than it took me ! ” 

“I hate to hear you talking like that, Gilbert. Any- 
body ’d think you were a dried-up old rip. You’re fright- 
fully cynical. ...” 

“That’s because I’m so young, Quinny. I’m younger 
than you are, you know ... six months . . . but I ’ll grow 
up. I will grow up, Quinny, I swear I will, and get full 
of the milk of lovingkindness. Pass the meringues. They 
play the devil with my inside, but I like them and I don’t 
care . . . only Lord help the actors to-night ! ’ ’ 

“I suppose Lady Cecily got tired of you, Gilbert,” 
Henry said deliberately. He felt angry wdth him and tried 
to hurt him. The beauty of Lady Cecily had filled him 


CHANGING WINDS 


241 


with longing to meet and know her, and he had a strange 
sense of jealousy when he thought of Gilbert’s friendship 
with her. 

“No,” Gilbert answered, “I don’t think she got tired 
of me. I think she still cares for me as much as ever she 
did! . . .” 

‘ ‘ Damned conceit ! ’ ’ Henry exclaimed, laughing to cover 
the jealousy that was in him. 

“Oh, no, Quinny, not really. You’ll understand that 
soon, I expect!” He pushed his tea-cup away from him, 
and sat back in his chair. ‘ ‘ I suppose it is caddish to talk 
of her like this,” he went on. “One ought to bear one’s 
wounds in silence and feel no resentment at all . . . but 
somehow she draws out the caddish part of me. There are 
women like that, Quinny. There’s a nasty, low, mean 
streak in every man, I don’t care who he is, and some 
women seem to find it very easily. Here, let’s get out of 
this. You pay. I’ve had a sugary bun and a couple of 
meringues. ...” 


5 

Later in the evening they went to the theatre to- 
gether. As they walked up the steps into the entrance 
hall, Henry saw Lady Cecily standing in a small group of 
men and women who were talking and laughing very 
heartily. 

‘ ‘ There she is ! ” he whispered to Gilbert. 

“Who is?” 

“Lady Cecily!” 

“Oh, so she is. Let’s find our seats !” 

“Perhaps you could catch her eye, Gilbert. . 

‘ ‘ Catch my grandmother ! ’ ’ said Gilbert. ' ' Come on ! ” 

But if Gilbert were not willing to catch Lady Cecily’s 
eye. Lady Cecily was very willing to catch his. She saw 
him walking towards the stalls, and she left her group of 


242 


CHANGING WINDS 


friends and went over to him and touched his arm. ‘‘Hil- 
loa, Gilbert!” she said, holding her hand out to him. “I 
thought I should see you here to-night ! ’ ’ 

She spoke in louder tones than most women speak, and 
her voice sounded as if it were full of laughter. There 
was something in her attitude which stirred Henry, some- 
thing which vaguely reminded him of a proud animal, 
stretching its limbs after sleep. Her thick, golden hair, 
cunningly bound about her head, glistened in the softened 
light, and he could almost see golden, downy gleams on her 
cheeks. She held her skirts about her, as she stood in 
front of Gilbert, and Henry could see her curving breasts 
rising and falling very gently beneath her silken dress. 
The odour of some disturbing perfume floated from her. . . . 
He moved a step nearer to her, wondering why Gilbert did 
not smile at her nor show any signs of pleasure at meeting 
her. It seemed to him to be impossible for any one but 
the most curmudgeonly of men to behave so ungraciously 
to so beautiful a woman, or to resist her radiant smiles. 
She turned to him as he moved towards her, and he saw 
that her eyes were grey. He heard Gilbert mumbling the 
introduction. 

^‘So glad!” she said, shaking hands with him. He had 
expected her to bow to him, and had not been prepared for 
the offer of her hand. He inwardly cursed his clumsiness 
as he changed his gesture. ^‘I saw you in the Park with 
Gilbert this afternoon, didn’t I?” she added. 

“Yes,” he answered, and could say no more. Shyness 
had fallen on him, and he stood before her, grinning fatu- 
ously, and twisting a button on his waistcoat, but unable to 
speak. “Yes,” he said, after a while, “I was with Gilbert 
in the Park this afternoon!” 

“Speak up, you fool!” he was saying to himself. 
“Here’s the loveliest woman you’ve ever met waiting for 
you to speak to her, and all you can do is to repeat her 
phrases as if you were a newly-breeched brat aping its par- 
ent. Speak up, you fool! ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


243 


He felt his face turning red and hot. Almost before he 
knew what he was saying his tongue began to wag, and he 
heard himself saying, in a stiff, stilted voice, “It was very 
nice in the Park this afternoon! . . OK, banal fool, he 
thought, she will despise you now, as if you were a great, 
gawky lout. . . . 

She turned away from him, and spoke to Gilbert. “ I Ve 
been at Dulbury,^^ she said, “for six weeks. That’s where 
I got all this brown! ...” She laughed and pointed to 
her cheeks. “I’m so glad to get back. The country bores 
me stiff. Nothing to see but the scenery. Oh dear!” She 
almost yawned at her remembrance of the country. “And 
things are always biting me or stinging me. I ’m miserable 
all the time I’m there!” 

“Then why do you go?” said Gilbert. 

“Jimphy wanted to go. Jimphy thinks it’s his duty 
to show himself to the tenants now and again. It’s the 
only return he can make, poor dear, for all that rent they 
pay!” 

Gilbert said “Hm!” and then turned to go to the 
stalls. “It’s Jimphy ’s birthday to-day,” she said, and he 
turned to her again. “That’s why we’re here to-night. 
Together, I mean. He ’s treating me to a box. Come round 
and talk to us, Gilbert, after the first act . . . and you, too, 
Mr. . . . Mr! . . .” 

She fumbled over his name. Gilbert, as is the custom 
in England when introducing people, had spoken the name 
so indistinctly that she had not heard it. 

‘ ‘ Quinn ! ” he said. 

“Of course,” she replied. “Mr. Quinn. I’m awfully 
sttfpid about names. You’ll come, too?” 

‘ ‘ I should like to ! ” 

“Do. Gilbert, don’t forget. Jimphy ’s very morose this 
evening. He’s thirty-one to-day, and he thinks that old 
age is creeping over him!” 

“All right,” said Gilbert gloomily, and then he and 
Henry went to their seats. 


CHANGING WINDS 




‘‘Who is Jimphy?” said Henry, as they walked down 
the stairs into the auditorium. 

‘‘Her husband. ^Didn’t you notice something hanging 
around in the vestibule while we were talking to her ? ’ * 

“No. There were so many people about!” 

“Well, if you had noticed something hanging around, 
that would have been Jimphy. His real name is Jasper, 
but Cecily never calls any one by his real name . . . except 
me. She canT think of a name for me!” 

They entered the auditorium and stood for a moment 
looking about the theatre. People were passing quickly 
into their seats now, and the theatre was full of an eager 
air, of massed pleasure, and a loud buzz of conversation 
spread over the stalls from the pit where rows of young 
women whispered to each other excitedly as this well-known 
person and that well-known person entered. 

“That’s ’er, that’s ’er!” one girl said in a frenzied whis- 
per to her companion. 

“Viola Tree?” the other girl, gazing vacantly into the 
stalls, replied. 

“No, silly! Ellen Terry! Clap, can’t you?” 

And they clapped their hands as the actress went to her 
seat. 

There was more clapping when Sir Charles Wyndham 
came in and took his seat. 

“Is it Viola Tree?” the girl repeated. 

“No, silly. It’s Wyndham. Bray-vo! Seventy, if ’e’s 
a day, an’ don’t look it. My word, I am enjoyin’ myself, 
I can tell you ! Everybody ’s ’ere to-night. Of course, it ’s 
St. James’s, of course! ...” 

Popular criminal lawyers came in and sat next to racing 
marquises; and lords and ladies mingled with actresses 
who very ostentatiously accompanied their mothers. A few 
men of letters and a crowd of dramatic critics, depressed, 
unenthusiastic men, leavened the mass of the semi-great. 
The rest were the children of Israel. 


CHANGING WINDS 


245 


“Jews to the right of us, Jews to the left of us! . . 
Gilbert said. 

“Anti-Semite!’^ Henry replied. 

“Only in practice, Quinny, not in theory. I’ll see you 
at the interval!” 

“If you nip out of your seat as the curtain goes down,” 
said Henry, “we can both get up to her box before the 
rush! ...” 

“There won’t be any rush.^’ 

“Well, anyhow, we can get up to the box pretty quickly !” 

Gilbert walked away without replying, and Henry sat 
back in his seat and watched the boxes so that he might 
see Lady Cecily the moment she entered. His stall was 
in the last row, against the first row of the pit, and the girls 
who had applauded Miss Terry and Sir Charles Wynd- 
ham were still identifying the fashionable people. 

“I tell you it is ’im,” said the more assertive of the two. 

“I sawr ’is picture in the Daily Reflexion the time that 
feller . . . wot’s ’is name . . . the one that ’anged all ’is 
wives in the coal-cellar . . . you know! ...” 

‘ ‘ I know, ’ ’ the other girl replied. ‘ ‘ ’Orrible case, I call 
it!” 

“Well, ’e defended ’im. I sawr ’is picture in the Daily 
Reflexion myself. Very ’andsome man, eh? They do 
say! . . .” 

Lady Cecily came into her box, followed by her husband, 
and Henry looked steadily up at her in the hope that she 
would see him, but she did not glance in his direction. He 
could see that she had found Gilbert in the audience, but 
Gilbert was not looking at her. An odd sensation of jeal- 
ousy ran through him. He suddenly resented her famil- 
iarity with Gilbert. He remembered that she had called 
him by his Christian name, that she distinguished between 
him and other men by calling him by his proper name, and 
not by some fanciful perversion of it. If only she would 
call Mm by his Christian name ! . . . 


246 CHANGING WINDS 

She was leaning on the edge of the box, and looking about 
the auditorium. 

“That’s Lydy Cecily Jyne!” he heard the assertive girl 
behind him saying. 

“’Oo?” 

‘ ‘ Lydy Cecily J yne. Y ou know ! ’ ’ 

Her husband leant back in his seat, stifling a yawn as he 
did so, and Henry saw that he was a faded, insignificant- 
looking man whose head sloped so sharply that it seemed 
to be galloping away from his forehead; but he did not 
pay much attention to him. His eyes were fixed on Lady 
Cecily. 

“A bit ’ot, she is,” the girl behind him was saying. 
“Well, I mean to say! ...” 

But what she meant to say, Henry neither knew nor 
cared. The lights in the theatre were lowered, leaving only 
the bright, warm glow of the footlights on the heavy cur- 
tain. He could see Lady Cecily’s face still golden and 
glowing even in the darkness. 

“My dear,” said the girl behind him, “the things I’ve 
’eard . . . well, they’d fill a book!” 

Then the curtain went up and the play began. 

He saw her leaning forward eagerly to watch the stage, 
and presently he heard her laughing at some piece of wit 
in the play: a clear, joyful laugh; and as she laughed, she 
turned for a few moments and gazed into the darkened 
theatre. Her beautiful eyes seemed to him to be shining 
stars, and he imagined that she was looking straight at 
him. He smiled at her, and then jeered at himself. “Of 
course, she can’t see me,” he said. 

He tried to interest himself in the traffic of the stage, 
but his thoughts continually wandered to the woman in 
the box above him. 

“She’s the loveliest woman I’ve ever seen,” he said to 
himself. 


THE FIFTH CHAPTER 


1 

She turned to greet them as they entered the box. * ‘ Come 
and sit beside me, Gilbert!^’ she said. “Mr. Quinn . . . 
oh, you don’t know Jimphy, do you?” She introduced 
Henry to her husband who mumbled “How do!” in a 
sulky voice, and stood against the wall of the box twisting 
his moustache. The shyness which had enveloped Henry 
in the vestibule of the theatre still clung about him, and he 
felt awkward and tongue-tied. Lord Jasper Jayne did not 
help Henry to get rid of his shyness. There was a “Who- 
the-devil-are-you ? ” look about him that made easy conver- 
sation impossible and any conversatlioU difficult. Lady 
Cecily was chatting to Gilbert as if she had b6en saving up 
all her conversation for a month past exclusively for his 
ears; and Henry could hear a recurrent phrase. . . . “But, 
Gilbert, it’s ages since you’ve been to see me, and you know 
I like you to come I . . . ” that jangled his temper and made 
him feel savage towards his friend. ... 

He made an effort to be chatty with Lord Jasper. “How 
do you like the play?” he said, as pleasantly as he could, 
for it was not easy to be chatty with Lord Jasper, whose 
coarse, flat features roused a sensation of repulsion in 
Henry. 

“I don’t like it,” he replied. “Rotten twaddle!” 

“Oh!” Henry exclaimed. 

There did not appear to be anything more to say, nor 
did Lord Jasper seem anxious to continue the conversa- 
tion: but just when it appeared that the effort to be 
pleasantly chatty was likely to be abortive. Lord Jasper 

247 


248 


CHANGING WINDS 


suddenly walked towards the door of the box. ‘‘Come 
and have a drink!” he said. 

Henry did not wish to go and have a drink, and he 
paused irresolutely until Lady Cecily suddenly leant for- 
ward and said with a laugh, “Yes, do go with Jimphy, Mr. 
Quinn. Gilbert and I have such a lot to say to each other, 
and Jimphy ’s not in a good temper. Are you, Jimphy, 
dear? You see,” she went on, “he wanted to go to the 
Empire, but I made him bring me here ! ... Do cheer up, 
Jimphy, dear! Smile for the company! ...” 

Lord Jasper opened the door of the box and went out, 
and Henry, raging inwardly, followed him. Before he 
had quite shut the door again. Lady Cecily had turned to 
Gilbert. Her hand was on his sleeve, and she was saying, 
“But Gilbert, darling! ...” He shut the door quickly 
and almost ran after Lord Jasper. She was in love with 
Gilbert, and Gilbert was in love with her. A woman would 
not put her hand so affectionately on a man’s arm and call 
him ‘ ‘ Gilbert, darling ! ” if she were not in love with him. 
She had wished to be alone with Gilbert . . . had prac- 
tically turned him out of the box so that she might be alone 
with Gilbert . . . had not waited for him to close the door 
before she began to fondle him . . . and Gilbert had spoken 
so bitterly of her ! . . . 

He followed on the heels of Lord Jasper, passing through 
a throng of men in the passages and on the stairs, until 
he reached the bar. “Whisky and soda?” said Lord 
Jasper, and Henry nodded his head. 

“I hate theatres,” Lord Jasper said. 

“Oh!” Henry replied. 

That seemed to be the only adequate retort to make to 
anything that Jimphy said. 

“Yes, I can’t stand ’em. Cecily let me in to-night . . . 
on a chap ’s birthday, too. She might have chosen the Em- 
pire ! ’ ’ 

“You like music-halls then?” 


CHANGING WINDS 


249 


‘^They're all right. Better than theatres anyhow. I 
like to see girls dancing and . . . and ... all that kind of 
thing 

A bell rang, warning them that the second act was about 
to begin. 

“I suppose we ought to go back,” said Henry, putting 
his glass down. He had barely touched the whisky and 
soda. 

‘^No hurry,” Lord Jasper replied. ‘‘No hurry. And 
you haven ^t drunk your whisky? Cecily’s quite happy 
with that chap, Farlow. ... I don’t like him myself . . . 
oh, I say, he’s a pal of yours, isn’t he? Well, it doesn’t 
matter now. I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me. 
I know he doesn’t. I can always tell a chap doesn’t like 
me because I generally don’t like him. Have another, will 
you ? ’ ’ 

Henry shook his head. 

“I think we ought to be getting back,” he said, “I hate 
disturbing people after the curtain ’s gone up ! ” 

“You don’t want to see that rotten play, do you? Look 
here ... I’ve forgotten your name! Sorry! ...” 

“Quinn. Henry Quinn!” 

“Oh, Quinn! You’re not English, are you?” 

“I’m Irish.” 

“Are you? That’s damn funny! Well, anyhow, what 
I was going to say was this. You don’t want to see this 
rotten play, do you?” 

“I do rather! . . .” 

“No, you don’t, Quinn. No, you don’t. And I don’t 
want to see it, either. Very well, then, what’s to prevent 
you and me going to the Empire together, eh? We can 
come back for Cecily ! . . . ” 

Henry stared at Lord Jasper. “But we can’t do that,” 
he protested. 

“Oh, yes we can. Cecily won’t mind. She’ll be glad. 
We’ll go and tell her . . . and look here, Quinn, I’ll intro- 


250 


CHANGING WINDS 


duce you to a girl I know . . . very nice girl . . . perfect 
lady . . . lives with her mother as a matter of fact . . . 
Eh?” 

“I’d much rather see the play!” 

‘ ‘ Oh, all right, ’ ’ Lord Jasper said sulkily. ^ ‘ All right 1 ’ ’ 

Henry moved towards the door of the bar, but Lord 
Jasper made no attempt to follow him. “Aren’t you com- 
ing?” he said, pausing at the door. 

“No,” Lord Jasper replied. “I don’t want to see the 
damn play. I shall have another drink, and then I shall 
go to the Empire by myself. You better go back to Cecily 
and . . . and that chap Farlow. She won’t notice I’m not 
there !” 

“You’d better come and tell her yourself, hadn’t you?” 
Henry said. 

Lord Jasper deliberated with himself for a few moments. 

“All right,” he said. “I will. I’ll come presently. 
You tell her, will you, that I’ll come presently. P’raps 
you’ll change your mind, Quinn, and come with me to the 
Empire after you’ve had another dose of this damn play. 
A chap doesn’t want to see a play on a chap’s birth- 
day! . . .” 

It occurred to Henry that Lord Jasper Jayne was 
slightly drunk. He had swallowed the second whisky and 
soda rather more expeditiously than he had swallowed the 
first, and no doubt he had dined well. There was a bleary 
look in his eyes that signified a heated brain. . . . 

“My God,” Henry said to himself, “that beautiful 
woman married to this . . . this swine ! ’ ’ 

“I’m thirty-one to-day, ole f ’la,” Lord Jasper continued, 
coming over to Henry and taking hold of his arm. 
“Thirty-one. I’m getting on in years, ole f ’la, that’s what 
I’m doing . . . sere and yellow, so to speak . . . and a 
chap my age doesn’t want to be bothered with a damn play. 
He wants something . . . something substansl! ...” He 
fumbled over the word “substantial” and then fell on it. 


CHANGING WINDS 


251 


‘‘Something substansl,’’ he repeated. “Now, if you come 
with me ! . . 

“I say, you mustn’t talk so loudly,” Henry warned him. 
“The curtain’s gone up, and you’ll disturb people. ...” 

“All right, ole f’la, all right. I won’t say another 
word ! ’ ’ 

They stumbled along the passages to the door of the 
box, and entered as quietly as they could. 

“We thought you’d got lost,” said Lady Cecily, smiling 
at Henry. 

“No . . . no,” he replied, “we didn’t get lost!” 


2 

Gilbert was sitting in the seat where Jimphy had sat 
earlier in the evening. “Gilbert is going to stay here,” 
said Lady Cecily. “Won’t you stay, too, Mr. Quinn!” 

“Won’t I be crowding you? . . .’’he said. 

“Oh, no,” she replied. “Jimphy doesn’t want to see 
the play anyhow, and he’ll be quite happy if he has some 
one to talk to in the bar between the acts! ...” 

He felt the blood rushing violently to his head, and in 
his anger he almost got up and walked out of the box. 
That she should use him to keep her sottish husband enter- 
tained while she made love to Gilbert, filled him with a 
sensation that came near to hatred of her. Gilbert had 
not spoken since they returned to the box, but it was clear 
from his manner that there had been love-making. . . . 
He crushed down his anger, and stood behind Lady Cecily 
while the play went on. Her bare shoulders had a soft, 
warm look, in the subdued light ... he was conscious of 
beautifully shaped ears nestling in golden hair . . . and 
the anger in him began to die. Once she moved slightly 
in her seat, and looked round as if she wanted to speak. 
He leant over her. 

“Do you want anything?” he asked. 


252 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘My wrap/’ she said. 

He picked up the flimsy wrap and put it about her 
shoulders, and she turned to him and smiled and said, 
‘ ‘ Thank you ! ’ ’ and instantly all the anger in him perished. 
He had admired her before, admired her ardently, but now 
he knew that he loved her, must love her always. . . . 

There was a sound of heavy breathing, and he turned to 
look at Jimphy. 

“Wake him up,” said Lady Cecily in a whisper. “Poor 
dear, he always goes to sleep when he’s annoyed!” 

He tiptoed across the box and shook the sleeper’s arm. 

“Eh? What is it?” Lord Jasper said, as he opened his 
eyes and gaped about him, and then, as he became con- 
scious of his surroundings, he said, “Is it over yet ? ’ ’ 

“No. The second act isn’t finished yet!” 

“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. 

“It’ll be over in a few minutes!” 

“Thank God! I can’t stick plays . . . not this sort 
anyhow. I don’t mind a musical comedy now and again, 
although I think you can have too much of that. ...” 

Lady Cecily turned and waved her hand at her husband. 
‘ ‘ Ssh, J imphy ! ’ ’ she whispered. “You ’re making a fright- 
ful row!” 

The second act ended soon afterwards, and Lord Jasper 
scrambled to his feet ... he had been sitting on the 
ground at the back of the box, yawning and yawning . . . 
and made for the door. ‘ ‘ Come and have a drink, Quinn ! ’ ’ 
he said. 

“No, thanks,” Henry replied. 

“Come on. Be a sport!” 

“Do go with him, Mr. Quinn, please,” Lady Cecily said. 
“He’s sure to get lost or troublesome or something. Aren’t 
you, Jimphy dear?” 

“Aren’t I what?” 

“Aren’t you sure to get lost or troublesome or some- 
thing ! ’ ’ 

Lord Jasper did not reply to his wife. “Come along, 


CHANGING WINDS 


253 


Quinn he said. ‘‘Cecily thinks she’s being comic ! . . 

Henry hesitated for a moment or two. He did not wish 
to go to the bar, and he was sick of the sight of Lord Jasper. 
He wished very much to stay with Lady Cecily, and he 
felt hurt because she had urged him to accompany her hus- 
band. He would have to do as she had asked him, of 
course. . . . While he hesitated, Gilbert got up quickly 
from his seat and went to the door of the box. “ I ’ll come 
with you, Jimphy!” he said, and then, almost pushing 
Lord Jasper in front of him, he went out, closing the door 
of the box behind him. Henry stared at the door for a 
second or two, nonplussed by the swiftness of Gilbert’s 
action, and then he turned to Lady Cecily. A look of vex- 
ation on her face instantly disappeared and she smiled at 
Henry. 

“Come and sit here,” she said, “and tell me all about 
yourself. I haven’t really got to know you, have I? Gil- 
bert says you’re Irish!” 

“Yes,” he answered, sitting down. 

“How jolly!” she said. 

“Do you think so?” 

“Oh, yes. It’s supposed to be awfully jolly to be Irish. 
All the Irish people in books seem to be very amused about 
something. I suppose it’s the climate. They say there’s 
a great deal of rain in Ireland. ...” 

“Yes,” he answered vaguely, “there is some sometimes!” 

She questioned him about Gilbert and Ninian Graham 
and Roger Carey. 

“It must be awfully jolly,” she said, “to be living to- 
gether like that, you four men!” 

He noticed that Lady Cecily always spoke of things being 
“awfully jolly” and wondered why her vocabulary should 
be so limited in its expressions of pleasure. 

“We get on very well together,” he replied, “and it’s 
very lively at times. Gilbert’s very lively. ...” 

“Is he?” she said. “He always seems so . . . so . . . 
well, not lively. I don’t mean that he’s solemn or pom- 


^54 


CHANGING WINDS 


pous, but he^s so . . . so anxious to have his own way, if you 
understand me. Now, I’m not like that!” She broke off 
and laughed. “Oh, I don’t quite mean that. I am selfish. 
I know I am. I love having my own way, but if I can’t 
have a thing just as I want it . . . well, I’m content to 
have it in the way that I can. Now, do you understand?” 

Henry nodded his head. 

“Gilbert isn’t like me,” she continued. “He says to 
himself, ‘I must have this thing exactly in this way. If I 
can’t have it exactly in this way, then I won’t have it at 
all!’ and it’s so silly of him to behave like that!” 

Henry looked up at her in a puzzled fashion. “What is 
it he wants? ... I beg your pardon, I’m being imperti- 
nent ! ’ ’ 

“Oh, no!” she replied, smiling graciously at him. “He 
wants ... oh, he wants everything like that. Haven’t 
you noticed ? ’ ’ 

“No,” Henry answered, “I haven’t.” 

“Well, you will some day. My motto is. Take what you 
can get in the way you can get it. It’s so much easier to 
live if you act on that principle ! ’ ’ 

“Gilbert’s an artist. Lady Cecily, and he can’t act on 
that principle. No artist can. He takes what he wants in 
the way that he wants it or else he will not take it at 
all!” 

“Exactly. That’s what I’ve been saying. And it’s so 
silly. But never mind. He ’s young yet, and he ’ll learn ! ’ ’ 

She turned to gaze at the audience, and Henry, not know- 
ing what else to do and having no more to say, looked too. 
He could think of plenty of fine things to say to her, but he 
could not get them on to his tongue. He wanted to tell 
her that he had scarcely heard a word of what was said in 
the first act of the play because he had filled his mind with 
thoughts of her, and had spent most of the time in gazing 
up at her as she sat leaning on the ledge of her box; but 
when he tried to speak, his mouth seemed to be parched and 
his tongue would not move. 


CHANGING WINDS 


^55 


3 

‘^Do you like this play?’^ she asked. 

‘^No/^ he replied. 

^‘Why? I thought everybody admired Wilde’s wit. 
It’s clever, isn’t it?” 

‘‘I don’t like it!” 

“But it’s supposed to be awfully clever!” she insisted. 

“It’s a common melodrama with bits of wit and epi- 
gram stuck on to it!” Henry answered. 

“Oh, really!” 

“The wit isn’t natural ... it doesn’t grow naturally 
out of the life of the play, I mean. It’s stuck on like . . . 
like plaster images on the front of a house. The witty 
speeches aren’t spontaneous . . . they don’t come inevit- 
ably! ... I’m afraid I’m not making myself very clear, 
but anyhow, I don’t like the play. I don’t like anything 
Wilde wrote, except ‘The Ballad of Beading Gaol,’ and 
even that’s not true. That’s really why I dislike his work. 
It isn’t true, any of it. It’s all lies. ...” 

“How awfully interesting!” 

“Do you know ‘The Ballad of Beading Gaol’? he asked. 

“No. . . . Oh, yes! I have read it. Of course, I have. 
Somebody lent it to me or I bought it or something. . . . 
Anyhow, I have read it, but I can’t remember. ...” 

“Do you remember the lines? . . . 

For all men hill the thing they love, 

But all men do not die.*’ 

“I seem to remember something . . .’’she said vaguely. 

“Well, that’s a lie. All men don’t kill the thing they 
love. Wilde couldn’t help lying even when he was most 
sincere ! ’ ’ 

“That’s awfully interesting,” Lady Cecily said. “Do 
you know I’ve never thought of that before. Won’t you 
come and see me one afternoon, Mr. Quinn?” 


256 


CHANGING WINDS 


“I should like to/’ he said, and as he spoke, the door of 
the box opened and Gilbert entered, followed by Lord 
Jasper. 

Lady Cecily turned eagerly to Gilbert. ^‘Oh, Gilbert,” 
she said, “Mr. Quinn promised to come and see me one 
afternoon. You’ll bring him, won’t you? Come on 
Wednesday, both of you!” 

“I should like to,” Henry murmured again. 

“I don’t think I can come on Wednesday,” Gilbert said. 

“Oh, yes, you can,” Lady Cecily exclaimed, “and if 
you can’t, you can come some other day. You’ll come, Mr. 
Quinn, won ’t you ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, Lady Cecily! ...” 

“And. . . . Jimphy, dear, do be nice and ask them to 
come to supper with us after the play. We’re going to 
the Savoy afterwards. I thought it would please Jimphy 
to go there because he ’d be sure not to like the play. ...” 

“Yes, you come along, you chaps!” Jimphy said, will- 
ingly. 

“I can’t. I’m sorry,” Gilbert replied. “I’ve got to 
go down to Fleet Street and write a notice of this play ! ’ ’ 

“Can’t you put it off for once, Gilbert!” Lady Cecily 
said. 

Gilbert laughed. “I should like to ‘see Dilton’s face 
if I were to do that. ...” 

‘ ‘ Dilton ! Dilton ! ! Who is Dilton ? ’ ’ she demanded. 

“My editor. Very devoted to the human note, Dilton 
is. No, Cecily, I’m sorry, but I must go down to Fleet 
Street. Henry can go with you.” 

She paused for a moment, and then said, “How long 
will it take you to write the notice of the play?” she asked, 
adding before he could answer, “Can’t you do it now?” 

“Yes, Gilbert,” Henry said, “you can do it now. You 
know the play, and you ’ve seen the acting in two acts. ...” 

Gilbert looked at him very directly, and when he spoke, 
his voice was very firm. “No,” he said, “I must go down 
to Fleet Street!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


257 


Lady Cecily was cross and hurt, and she turned away 
pettishly. 

“Oh, very well!” she said shortly. 

There was a slight air of restraint among them . . . even 
Lord Jasper seemed to feel it. It was he who spoke next. 

“You can come and join us at the Savoy after youVe 
done your . . . whatyoumaycallit, can’t you?” he said. 

Gilbert paused for a moment. He looked as if he were 
undecided as to what he should say. Then he said, “Yes, 
I can do that ... if I get away from the office in time 1 ’ ’ 

Henry was about to say, “Why, of course, you can get 
away in plenty of time!” but he checked himself and did 
not say it. 

“Oh, that will do excellently,” said Lady Cecily, all 
smiles again. 

Then the lights of the theatre were lowered and the 
third act began. 


4 

When the play was over, they drove to Fleet Street in 
Lord Jasper’s motor-car. Lady Cecily had suggested that 
they should take Gilbert to his newspaper office in order 
to save time, and he had consented readily enough. 

“We might wait for you! ...” she added, but Gilbert 
would not agree to this proposal. “It isn’t fair to keep 
Jimphy from his birthday treat any longer,” he said, “and 
I may be some time before I ’m ready ! ’ ’ 

She was sitting next to Gilbert, and Henry and Jimphy 
were together with their backs to the chauffeur. She did 
not appear to be tired nor had the sparkle of her beautiful 
eyes diminished. She lay against the padded back of the 
car and chattered in an inconsequent fashion that was oddly 
amusing. She did not listen to replies that were made to 
her questions, nor did she appear to notice that sometimes 
replies were not made. It seemed to Henry that she would 
have chattered exactly as she was now chattering if she had 


258 


CHANGING WINDS 


been alone. Neither Gilbert nor Jimphy answered her, 
but Henry felt that something ought to be said when she 
made a direct remark. 

“Isn’t Fleet Street funny at this time of night?” she 
said. “So quiet. I do hope the supper will be fit to eat. 
Oh, Gilbert, I wish you’d say something in your notice 
of Wilde’s- play about his insincerity. I felt all the time 
I was listening to the play that . . . that it wasn’t true!’' 

Gilbert sat up straight in his seat and looked at her. 

“Oh!” he exclaimed. 

“Yes,” she went on. “The wit seemed to be stuck on 
to the play ... it wasn’t part of it! . . 

Gilbert leant back in his seat again. “You’ve been 
talking to Henry about Wilde, haven’t you?” 

She laughed lightly and turned towards Henry. “Oh, 
of course. Mr. Quinn, I always repeat what other people 
say. I forget that they’ve said it to me and think that I’ve 
thought of it myself!” 

Henry professed to be pleased that she had accepted his 
ideas so completely. 

“But, of course,” she continued, “what you said was 
quite true. I’ve always felt that there was something 
wrong with Wilde’s plays. ...” 

“I can’t think what you all want to talk about a play 
for. I never see anything in ’em to talk about!” Jimphy 
murmured sleepily. 

“Go to sleep, Jimphy, dear. We’ll wake you when we 
get to the Savoy. ...” 

“Always ragging a chap!” Jimphy muttered, and then 
closed his eyes. 

The car turned down one of the narrow streets that lead 
from Fleet Street to the Thames Embankment, and then 
turned again and stopped. 

“Oh, is this your office, Gilbert?” Lady Cecily said. 
“Such an ugly, dark looking place! But I suppose it’s 
interesting inside? Newspaper offices are supposed to be 
awfully interesting inside, aren’t they?” 


CHANGING WINDS 


259 


‘^Are they?’’ Gilbert replied, as he got out of the car. 
^‘I’ve never noticed it. Noisy holes where no one has time 
to think. Good-bye.” 

^‘Not ^good-bye,’ Gilbert! We shall see you soon at the 
Savoy, shan’t we?” 

‘‘Oh, yes. Yes. I’d almost forgotten that!” 

The car drove olf, threading the narrow steep street 
slowly. They could hear the deep rurr-rurr of the printing 
machines coming from the basements of the buildings, and 
now and then great patches of pallid blue light shot out of 
open windows. Motor-vans and horse-waggons were drawn 
up against the pavements in front of the office-doors, wait- 
ing for the newly-printed papers. Bundles of Daily Re- 
flexions were already printed and were being thrown on to 
the cars and waggons for distribution. 

“Are they printed already?” Lady Cecily said. 

“Most of them were printed at nine o’clock,” Henry 
replied. “The ha’penny illustrated papers go all over the 
country before the ordinary papers are printed at all ! ” 

“How awfully clever of them!” she said. 

The car turned into Fleet Street and quickly drove up to 
the Savoy. 

“Thank God!” said Jimphy. “I shall get some fun out 
of my birthday now ! ’ ’ 

“Jimphy loves his food,” Lady Cecily exclaimed. 
“Don’t you, Jimphy? Don’t you love your little turn- 
turn? ...” 

They entered the hotel and found the table which had 
been reserved for them. There was a queer, hectic gaiety 
about the place, as if every one present were making a 
desperate effort to eat, drink and be merry. People greeted 
Lady Cecily as she passed them and muttered, ‘ ‘ ’loa, 
Jimphy!” Henry had never been to a fashionable res- 
taurant before, and the barbaric beauty of the scene fas- 
cinated him. The women were riotously dressed, and the 
colours of their garments mingled and merged like the 
colours of a sunset. There was a constant flow of people 


260 


CHANGING WINDS 


through the room, and the chatter of animated voices and 
bursts of laughter and the jingling, sentimental music 
played by the orchestra made Jimphy forget how bored he 
had been at the theatre. The slightly fuddled air which 
he had had in the bar of St. Jameses had left him and he 
began to talk. 

“Ripping woman, that!” he said to Henry, indicating 
a slight, dark girl who had entered the restaurant in com- 
pany with a tall, flaxen-haired man. “Pretty little flapper, 
I call her! I like thin women, myself. Well, slender a 
better word, isn’t it? What you say, Cecily?” 

Lady Cecily had tapped her husband’s arm. “Ernest 
Lensley’s just come in,” she said. “He’s with Boltt. Go 
and bring them both here. They can’t find seats, poor 
dears ! ’ ’ 

Ernest Lensley and Boltt were fashionable novelists. 
Lensley was an impudent-looking man with very blue eyes 
who had written a number of popular stories about society 
women who “chattered” very much in the way that Lady 
Cecily chattered. The heroine of his best-known book was 
modelled, so people said, on the wife of a Cabinet Minister, 
and thousands of suburban Englishwomen professed to 
have an intimate knowledge of the statesman’s family life 
solely because they had read Lensley’s novel. It was a 
flippant, vulgar book, the outcome of a flippant, vulgar 
mind. Boltt had a wider public than Lensley. Boltt, a 
tall, thin, stooping man, with peering eyes, had discovered 
“the human note” of which Gilbert’s editor prated con- 
tinually. He was a precise, priggish man, extraordinarily 
vain though no vainer than Lensley, who, however, had an 
easy manner that Boltt would never acquire. He spoke 
in the way in which one might expect a “reduced gentle- 
woman, poor dear!” to speak, and there was something 
about him that made a man long to kick him up a room 
and down a room and across a room and back again. His 
heroes were all big, burly, red-haired giants, who wore 
beards and old clothes and said “By God, yes!” when they 


CHANGING WINDS 


^61 


admired the scenery, and led a vagabond life in a per- 
fectly gentlemanly manner until they met the heroine. . . . 
His heroines constantly fell into situations which were ex- 
tremely compromising in the eyes of a censorious world, 
but they were never completely compromised. The whole 
world knew, before the conclusion of the story, that the 
heroine had been falsely suspected. If she had spent the 
night in the hero’s bedroom, she had done so with the best 
intentions, under the strictest chaperonage . . . usually 
that of her dear, devoted old nurse, God bless her! . . . 
whose presence in the bedroom had been hidden, until the 
middle of the penultimate chapter, from the heroine’s 
friends and relatives. The hero, of course, poor, manly, 
broken giant, had been ill, suffering from a fever, and in his 
delirium had called for her, discontent until she had put 
her cool firm hand upon his hot brow, and the doctor had 
said that if she would stay with him, she would save his 
life. So she had fiung her reputation to the winds and 
had hurried to his bedroom. ... It was pretentious, flatu- 
lent stuff, through which • a thin stream of tepid lust 
trickled so gently that it seemed like a stream of pretty 
sentiment, and it was written with such cleverness that 
young ladies in Bath and Cheltenham and Atlantic City, 
U. S. A., were tricked into believing that this was Life 
. . . Real Life. . . . 

Lensley and Boltt followed Jimphy eagerly to Lady 
Cecily’s table. Lensley was glad to sit with her: Boltt 
was glad to be certain of his supper. Lensley enjoyed 
listening to Cecily’s babble because he could always be 
certain of getting something out of her speech that would 
just fit into his next novel: Boltt liked his contiguity to 
members of the governing class. They completely ignored 
Henry after they had been introduced to him. 

“Mr. Quinn is writing a novel, too!” said Lady Cecily. 

“Oh, yes!” said Lensley. 

“Indeed!” Boltt burbled. 

Thereafter they addressed themselves exclusively to Lady 


sea 


CHANGING WINDS 


Cecily and her husband. Lensley told Lady Cecily that she 
was to be the heroine of his next book. “I’m studying you 
now, dear Lady Cecily!” he said. “Jotting you down in 
my little book ... all your little plaguey ways and 
speeches! ...” 

“How awfully exciting!” she replied, and her eyes 
seemed to become brighter, and she leant towards the novel- 
ist as if she meant to reveal herself more clearly to him. 

“You’ll be angry with me when you see the book,” he 
said. “Dreadfully angry. You know poor Mrs. Maldon 
was very hurt about * Jennifer^ Mrs. Maldon was the 
wife of the Cabinet Minister. 

“I shant’t mind what you say about me,” Lady Cecily 
said, “so long as you make me the heroine of the book. 
What are you going to call it? . . .” 

“The Delectable Lady!” 

“How awfully nice! ...” 


5 

Henry began to feel bored. He wished that Gilbert 
would come. Gilbert would soon rout this paltry little 
tuppenny-ha’penny Society novelist with his pretty-pretty 
chatter and his pretty-pretty blue eyes and his air of being 
a knowing dog. Lady Cecily seemed to have forgotten 
Henry altogether. . . . He turned to Lord Jasper who was 
trying hard not to yawn in Mr. Boltt’s face. Mr. Boltt 
had been a surveyor at one period of his life, and his 
favourite theme of conversation was Renascence archi- 
tecture. He was now telling Jimphy of the glories of 
French Cathedrals, and Jimphy, who cared even less for 
French Cathedrals than he cared for English ones, was 
wondering just how he could change the conversation to a 
discussion of the latest ballet at the Empire and partic- 
ularly of a girl he knew who was a perfect lady and, as a 
matter of fact, lived with her mother. The supper party 


CHANGING WINDS 


263 


seemed likely to end dismally, and Henry, when he was 
not wishing that Gilbert would come, was wishing that he 
himself had not come. He could not understand why it 
was that he had so much difficulty in talking easily with 
strangers. Lensley was prattling as if he were determined 
to discharge an entire novelful of “ chatter at Lady Cecily, 
and Boltt’s little clipped, pedantic voice recited a long 
rigmarole about a glorious view in France which he had 
lately seen while motoring in that country. Boltt admired 
Nature in the way in which any man of careful upbring- 
ing would admire a really nice woman. . . . 

Henry had lately reviewed a book by Boltt for a daily 
paper, and he had expressed scorn for it and its stuffed 
dummies, masquerading as men and women . . . and Boltt, 
who took himself very seriously indeed, had written a let- 
ter of complaint to the editor of the paper. Henry won- 
dered what Boltt would say if he knew that the review had 
been written by him, and an imp in him made him inter- 
rupt the long recital of the glories of France. 

‘‘The Morning Report had a good go at your last novel, 
Boltt he said. 

The novelist looked reproachfully at Henry, as if he 
were rebuking him for indelicacy. 

“I never see the Morning Report/^ replied loftily. 

“Oh, then, I suppose you didn’t see the review. I 
thought you probably got clippings from a Press-cuttings 
agency! ...” 

“Yes, oh, yes, I do. I seem to remember that the Morn- 
ing Report was unkind. Not quite fair, I should say!” 

Lord Jasper began to take an intelligent interest in the 
conversation. ‘ ‘ Have you published another book, Boltt ? ’ ’ 
he asked innocently. 

“Yes . . . a . . V Lord Jasper ... I have!” Mr. Boltt 
said, and there was some sniffiness in his tones. He was 
accustomed to lengthy reviews on the day of publication, 
and it annoyed him to think that there was some one in 


264 


CHANGING WINDS 


the world, some one, too, with whom he was acquainted, 
who did not know that the publication of one of his books 
was an event. 

“I can’t think how you writing chaps keep it up,” said 
Jimphy. “I couldn’t write a book to save my life! . . 

“No?” said Mr. Boltt, smiling in the way of one who 
says to himself, “God help you, my poor fellow, God help 
you 1 ’ ’ 

“I suppose it’s all a question of knack,” Jimphy con- 
tinued. “You get into the way of it and you can’t stop. 
Sometimes a tune gets into my head and I have to keep on 
humming it or whistling it. I’m not what you’d call a 
sentimental fellow at all, but that song . . . you know, 
about the honeysuckle and the bee ... I could not get 
that song out of my head. I thought I should go cracked- 
over it. Always humming it or whistling it . . . and I 
suppose if you get an idea for a yarn into your head, 
Boltt, well, it’s something like that!” 

Lady Cecily had exhausted the “chatter” of Mr. 
Lensley. 

“What’s that?” she exclaimed. 

“Lord Jasper is describing the processes of literature to 
me. Lady Cecily,” said Mr. Boltt sarcastically. “I have 
been greatly interested. 

The man’s conceit irritated Henry and he longed to dis- 
concert him. 

“Yes,” he said. “It all began by my saying something 
about a review of Boltt ’s last novel in the Morning Re- 
port! . . 

Mr. Boltt made motions with his hands. “Really,” he 
said, “Lady Cecily isn’t in the least interested in my 
effusions. ’ ’ 

“Oh, but I am, Mr. Boltt,” Lady Cecily interrupted. 
“What did the paper say? I’m sure it was very flatter- 
ing! . . .” 

“The reviewer said that the book would probably please 


CHANGING WINDS 


265 


the vicar’s only daughter, but that it wouldn’t impose upon 
her when she grew up. . . 

“ Oh ! ” said Lady Cecily. 

‘ ‘ Some rival, I ’m afraid ! ’ ’ Mr. Boltt murmured. ‘ ‘ Some 
one who dislikes me. ...” 

‘‘The chief complaint was that your people aren’t 
real. ...” Henry continued, though Mr. Boltt frowned 
heavily. 

“Yes. I don’t think we need discuss the matter further, 

Mr. . . .” 

“Quinn!!” said Henry. 

He felt happier now that he had pricked the egregious 
fellow’s vanity. 

“Silly of ’em to say that,” said Lord Jasper. “Boltt 
sells a tremendous number of books, don’t you, Boltt? 
More than Lensley does. And that shows, doesn’t it? If 
a chap can sell as many books as Boltt sells . . . well, he 
must be some good. I’ve never read any of ’em, of course, 
but then I’m not a chap that reads much. All the same, a 
chap I know says Boltt ’s all right, and he’s a chap that 
knows what he’s talking about. I mean to say, he’s writ- 
ten books himself!” 

Lady Cecily was no longer interested in the history of 
Mr. Boltt ’s novel. The meal was almost at an end, and 
Gilbert had not arrived. She glanced towards the door, 
looking straight over Mr. Lensley ’s head, and Henry could 
see that she was fidgeting. 

“Gilbert’s a long time,” he said to her. 

She did not answer, and before he could repeat his 
remark to her. Lord Jasper exclaimed, “I say, you know, 
we ought to be getting home, Cecily. It’s getting jolly 
late! . . .” 

“Let’s wait a little longer,” she said, “Gilbert hasn’t 
come yet!” 

“But I mean to say, this place’ll be closing soon. . . .” 

Mr. Boltt made a satirical remark on the ridiculously 


CHANGING WINDS 


early hours at which restaurants are compelled by law to 
close in England. In France, he said . . . but Lord Jas- 
per did not wait to hear what is done in France. 

“He won^t come now,’’ he said. “He wouldn’t have 
time to eat any supper if he were to come . . . and it’s 
getting jolly late, and I’m jolly tired!” 

He got up from the table as he spoke. “Very well,” 
said Lady Cecily, rising too. 

The others followed her example, and Boltt and Lensley 
prepared to escort Lady Cecily to the door, but she gave 
her hand to them and said “Good-night!” 

“It’s so nice to have seen you both,” she said. “No, 
don’t trouble. Mr. Quinn will come with me!” 

Lord Jasper had gone on in front to find his car, and 
Lady Cecily and Henry walked down the room together 
until they came to the courtyard where the car was wait- 
ing for them. 

“Tell Gilbert I’m angry with him,” she said. “He 
must come and see me soon and tell me how sorry he is. 
You’ll come, too, perhaps, Mr. Quinn!” 

He found his tongue suddenly. “I will. Lady Cecily,” 
he said. “I’ll come even if he doesn’t. I’ve enjoyed to- 
night tremendously. ...” 

“Have you, Mr. Quinn?” 

“Yes. . . .” 

“I say, come along,” Lord Jasper shouted to them. 

“Poor Jimphy’s getting fractious. You can tell me how 
much you’ve enjoyed to-night when we meet again!” 

He took her to the car, and watched her as she gathered 
her skirts about her and climbed inside. 

“Can’t we drop you at your house?” said Lord Jasper. 
“It won’t be any trouble to do so!” 

“No, thanks,” Henry replied. “I’d rather walk home. 
It’s such a beautiful night!” 

Lord Jasper followed Lady Cecily into the car. “You’re 
a romantic chap, Quinn!” he said, and then, as an after- 
thought, he added quickly, “I say, we must arrange to go 


CHANGING WINDS 267 

to the Empire together some evening. You’re the sort of 
chap I like. ...” 

Lady Cecily waved her hand to him. As the car moved 
off he saw her beautiful face leaning against the side of 
the car, and he longed to take her in his arms and kiss 
her. Then the car turned, and drove quickly off. He 
stood for a moment or two looking after it, and continued 
to stand still even when it had swung out of the court- 
yard into the Strand. Then he walked slowly away from 
the restaurant. He had not gone very far when his arm 
was touched, and, turning round, he saw Gilbert. 


6 

‘ ‘ Hilloa, ’ ’ he said, ‘ ‘ you ’re late ! ’ ’ 

‘^No, I’m not,” Gilbert replied. 

‘^Yes, you are. The Jaynes have gone!” 

saw them going. I’ve been here for over half-an- 
hour, waiting for you 1 ’ ’ 

‘‘Over half-an-hour ! What’s up, Gilbert?” 

Gilbert put his arm in Henry’s and made him move out 
of the Savoy courtyard. “Come down to the Embank- 
ment,” he said. “It’s quieter there. I want to talk to 
you!” 

“But hadn’t we better go home? We can talk on the 
way. It’s late. ...” 

“No. I want to go to the Embankment. Damn it all, 
Quinny, it’s a sentimental place for a heart-to-heart talk, 
isn’t it?” 

“You aren’t drunk, Gilbert, I suppose?” 

“Never so sober in my life, Quinny. Besides, I don’t 
get drunk. People who talk about beer and whisky as 
much as I do, never get drunk. Come along, there ’s a good 
chap ! ’ ’ 

“Very well . . . only I’m not going to stay long. I’m 
no good for work the day after I’ve had a long night. . . 


268 


CHANGING WINDS 


“I won't keep you long. How did the supper-party go 
off?" 

“Damnably. Two tame novelists turned up . . . Boltt 
and Lensley!" 

“Those asses!" 

“Yes. Lensley ‘chattered' to Lady Cecily, and Boltt 
bored and bored and bored. ... I took him down a bit. I 
rubbed in the Morning Report review. The little toad 
could hardly sit still! Of course, he affected the superior 
person attitude!" 

“God be merciful to him, poor little rat! He wants 
to be a wicked, hell-for-leather fellow, but he hasn't got 
the stomach for it! What did Cecily say when I didn't 
turn up?" 

‘ ‘ She looked rather cross. She told me as we came away 
to tell you she was angry with you. You're to go and apol- 
ogise to her as soon as possible!" 

“Did she?" 

“Yes. I say, Gilbert, why didn’t you turn up?" 

They had reached the Embankment, and they crossed to 
the riverside and leant against the parapet. 

“Because I was afraid to," said Gilbert. 

“Afraid to!" 

“Yes. Can't you see I’m in love with her?" 

“Well, I guessed as much. ..." 

“I love her so much that she can do what she likes with 
me, and all she likes to do is to destroy me!" 

“Destroy you?" 

“Yes. If you love Cecily, she demands the whole of 
your life. Every bit of it. She consumes you. . . . Oh, 
I know this sounds like a penny dreadful, Quinny, but it's 
true. I’ve asked her to run away with me, but she won't 
come. She says she hates scandal and she likes her social 
position. My God, I feel sick when I see Jimphy with 
her . . . like a damned big lobster putting his . . . hia 
claws about her. He isn't a bad fellow in his silly way, 
but I can’t stand him as Cecily’s husband!" 


CHANGING WINDS 


S69 


‘‘I know what you mean/’ said Henry. 

“I thought that if Cecily and I were to go away to- 
gether, we could get our lives into some sort of perspective, 
and then I could go on with my work and have her as 
well, but she won’t go away with me. She wants me to 
hang around, being her lover . . . and I can’t do that, 
Quinny. It’s mean and furtive, and I hate that. You’re 
always listening for some one coming ... a servant or the 
husband or some one . . . and I can’t stand that. If I 
love a woman, I love her, and I don’t want to spend 
part of my life in pretending that I don’t. I loathe 
myself when I have to change the talk suddenly or move 
away when a door opens. ... Do you understand, 
Quinny?” 

Henry nodded his head, but did not speak. 

“Once when I’d been begging Cecily to go away with 
me, Jimphy walked into the room . . . and I had to pre- 
tend to be talking about some nasturtiums that Cecily had 
grown. I felt like a cad. That’s what’s rotten about lov- 
ing another man’s wife. It’s the treachery of the thing, 
the pretending. ... I’ve often wondered why it is that 
love of that sort seems so romantic and splendid in books 
and so damnably mean when it comes into the Divorce 
Court . . . but when I met Cecily I knew why ... it’s 
because of the treachery and the deceit. I used to think 
that it was beautiful in books because artists were able to 
see the hidden beauty, and ugly in the Divorce Court 
because ordinary people only saw the surface things . . . 
but I’m not sure now.” 

He stopped speaking, but Henry did not speak instead. 
He did not know what to say ; he felt indeed that there was 
nothing to be said, that he must simply listen. He watched 
the electric signs on the other side of the river as they 
spelt out the virtues of Someone’s Teas and Another’s 
Whisky, and wondered how long it would be before Gilbert 
said something else. He was beginning to be bored by the 
business, and he felt sleepy. He was jealous too, when 


270 


CHANGING WINDS 


he thought that Gilbert had kissed Cecily and had been 
held in her beautiful arms. . . . 

“Cecily doesn^t mind about the shabbiness of it/’ he 
heard Gilbert saying. “We’ve talked about that, and she 
says it doesn’t matter a bit. All that matters to her is 
that she shan’t be found out . . . too publicly anyhow! 
She called me a prig when I said that I was afraid of 
tainting my work. ...” 

“Tainting your work?” 

“Yes. Perhaps it is priggish of me, but I feel that 
if I’m mean in one thing I may be mean in another. I’m 
terribly afraid of doing bad work, Quinny, and I got an 
idea into my head that if I let taint into my life in one 
place, I couldn’t confine it and it would spread to other 
places. Do you see? If I let myself get into a rotten 
position with Cecily, I might write down. ...” 

“I don’t see that,” said Henry. “Because you love a 
married woman, it doesn’t follow that you’ll pot-boil.” 

“No, perhaps not. But I was afraid of it. I suppose 
it was priggish of me. That wasn’t the only thing, how- 
ever. I knew that if I did what Cecily wanted me to do, 
I ’d spend most of my time with her or thinking about her. 
I can’t work if I’m doing that, for I think of her and 
long for her. . . . Oh, let’s go home. It isn’t fair to keep 
you here listening to my twaddle!” 

But they did not move. They gazed down on the swiftly- 
flowing river, and presently they heard Big Ben striking 
one deep note. 

“One o’clock!” said Gilbert. 

“What are you going to do about it, Gilbert?” Henry 
asked at last. 

“I’m going away from London. I’ve chucked my job 
on the Daily Echo. ...” 

“Good Lord, man, what for?” 

“Well, I’m fed-up with the English theatre to begin 
with, and I’m fed-up with journalism too . . . and it’s 
the only way I can get free of Cecily. I must finish the 


CHANGING WINDS 


m 

new comedy and I can’t finish it if I stay in town and 
see Cecily. She won’t let me finish it. She’ll make me 
go here and go there with her. She’ll keep me making 
love to her when I ought to be working. God damn women, 
Quinny I ’ ’ 

‘‘You’re excited, Gilbert!” 

“Yes, I know I am. When I’m with Cecily, I’m like a 
jelly-fish. She sucks the brains out of me. She doesn’t 
care whether I finish my comedy or not. She doesn’t care 
what happens to my work so long as I hang around and 
love her and kiss her whenever she wants me to. My brains 
go to bits when I ’m with her. I ’m all emotion and sensa- 
tion . . . just like those asses Lensley and Boltt. Quinny, 
fancy spending your life turning out the sort of stuff those 
two men write. They ’ve written about a dozen books each, 
and I suppose they ’re good for twenty or thirty more. I ’d 
rather be a scavenger 1 ’ ’ 

They walked along the Embankment towards Waterloo 
Bridge. 

“I’m going to Anglesey,” Gilbert said. “I shall go and 
stay there until the end of the summer ! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ I shall miss you, Gilbert. So will Ninian and Eoger I ’ ’ 

“I shall miss you three, but it can’t be helped. I’m 
the sort of man who succumbs to women ... I can’t help 
it. If they’re beautiful and soft and full of love . . . like 
Cecily . . . they down me. Their femininity topples me 
over, and there’s no work to be got out of me while I’m 
like that. But my work’s of more consequence to me than 
loving and kissing, Quinny, and if I can’t do it while I’m 
Cecily’s lover, then I’ll go away from her and do it!” 

“What makes you think you could do it if she were to 
go away with you?” 

“I don’t know. Hope, I suppose.” 

They walked up Villiers Street into the Strand, and 
made their way towards Bloomsbury. 

“I suppose,” said Gilbert, “you wouldn’t like to come 
to Anglesey too?” 


CHANGING WINDS 


Henry hesitated for a few moments. He had a vision 
of Lady Cecily’s beautiful face leaning against the padded 
side of the car, and he remembered that she had smiled 
and waved her hand to Kim. . . . 

“No,” he replied, “I don’t think so . . . not at present 
at any rate!” and then, added in explanation, “If I go, 
too, the house will be broken up. That would be a pity!” 

“I forgot that,” Gilbert answered; “Yes, of course!” 


THE SIXTH CHAPTER 


1 

Gilbert did not leave London, as he had intended, for Sir 
Geoffrey Mundane definitely decided to produce ‘ ‘ The 
Magic Casement'^ in succession to the play which was then 
being performed at his theatre. He had already discussed 
the caste with Gilbert, and on the morning after the scene 
on the Embankment, he telephoned to Gilbert, telling him 
that he had made engagements for the play, and would like 
to fix a date on which he should read the manuscript to 
the company. “Any day’ll suit me,” Gilbert had in- 
formed him, and Sir Geoffrey thereupon settled that the 
reading should take place two days later. “I suppose,” 
he said, “you’d, like to attend the rehearsals?” and Gil- 
bert, forgetting his resolution to fly from Lady Cecily, 
said that he would. He thought that the experience would 
be very valuable to him. He became so excited at the pros- 
pect of seeing a play of his performed at a West End 
theatre that he was unable to sit still, and his language, 
always extravagant, became absurd. He broke every rule 
that Roger had invented. “It’ll take all the royalties 
you’ll receive to pay off this score!” Roger said, thrusting 
the fine-book before him. 

“Poo!” said Gilbert. “Ifll buy up the Ten Command- 
ments with one night’s royalty! Oh, it’s going to be a 
success, I tell you. It’ll run for a year . . . more than 
that . . . two years ! . . . ” He began to estimate the num- 
ber of performances the play would receive. ‘ ‘ Six evening 
performances and two matinees every week for fifty-two 
weeks ! Eight times fifty-two, Roger . . . you were a Sec- 
ond Wrangler, you ought to know that! Four hundred 

273 


274 


CHANGING WINDS 


and sixteen! Lordy God, what a lot! And if I get ten 
pounds every time it^s done . . . Oh-h-h! Four thousand, 
one hundred and sixty pounds! And then there’ll be 
American rights and provincial rights. ... I’ll tell you 
what I’ll do, coves! I’ll buy you all a stick of barley- 
sugar each, or a penn’orth of acid-drops . . . which ’ud 
you like? ...” 

It was during the rehearsals of “The Magic Casement” 
that “Broken Spears” was published. 

“It isn’t as good as ‘Drusilla,’ ” they said to Henry, 
when they had read it, “but it’ll be more popular!” 

It was. The critics who had praised “Drusilla” were 
not impressed by “Broken Spears,” but the critics who 
had been indifferent to “Drusilla” praised “Broken 
Spears” so extravagantly that six thousand copies of it 
were sold in six months, apart from the copies which were 
sold to the lending libraries, and the sale of “Drusilla,” 
in consequence of the success of ‘ ‘ Broken Spears, ’ ’ increased 
from three hundred and seventy-five copies to one thousand 
five hundred and eighty. Mr. Quinn, in thanking Henry 
::or a copy of it, merely said, in direct reference to the 
Dook, “/ see yoii^ve been tickling the English. DonH go 
on doing itV^ and the effect of this criticism was so stimu- 
lating that Henry destroyed the three chapters of “Tur- 
bulence” which were in manuscript and started to rewrite 
the book. Literary agents now began to write to him, 
telling him how charmed they w.ere with his work and 
how certain they were of their ability to increase his 
income considerably; and a publisher of some enterprise 
and resource wrote to him and said that he would like to 
see his third book. ^ 

^‘You look as if you were established, Quinny!” said 
Boger, and Henry blushed and murmured deprecatingly 
about himself. 

“How’s the Bar?” he said. 

“Oh, it’s not bad. I got a fellow off to-day who ought 
to have had six months hard,” Boger answered. “And 


CHANGING WINDS 


275 


a new solicitor has given me a brief. We ought to ask 
him to dinner and feed him well. F. E. Robinson always 
tells his butler to bring out the second-quality wine for 
solicitors. Snob ! ’ ^ 

“We seem to be getting on, don’t we, coves?” Gilbert 
interjected. “Look at all these press-cuttings! ...” 

He held out a fistful of slips which had come that even- 
ing from a Press-Cutting Agency. “All about me,” he 
said, ‘ ‘ and the play. Mundane knows more about the pre- 
liminary puff than any one else in England. He calls me 
‘this talented young author from whom much may be ex- 
pected.’ I never thought I should get pleasure out of a 
trade advertisement, but I do. I’m lapping up this stuff 
like billy-o. I saw a poster on the side of a ’bus this 
afternoon, advertising ‘The Magic Casement.’ Mun- 
dane’s name was in big letters, and you could just see mine 
with the naked eye. I hopped on to the ’bus and went 
for a fourpenny ride on it, so’s I could touch the damn 
thing . . . and I very nearly told the conductor who I 
was. It’s no good pretending I’m not conceited. I am, 
and I don’t care. Where’s Ninian?” 

“Not come in yet. How’d the rehearsals go to-day?” 
Roger answered. 

“Better than any other day. They’re beginning to feel 
their parts. It’s about time, too. I felt sick with fright 
yesterday, they were so wooden. Mundane might have 
been the village idiot, instead of the fine actor he is . . . 
but they ’re better now. Ninian ’s late ! ’ ’ 

“Is he? He’ll be here presently. By the way, my 
Cousin Rachel’s coming to town to-morrow. She’s been 
investigating something or other . . . factory life, I think. 
I thought I ’d bring her here to dinner. She may be inter- 
esting.” 

“Do,” said Gilbert, and then, as he heard the noise of 
the street-door being closed, he added, “There’s Ninian 
now ! ’ ’ 

Ninian, on his way to his room, stopped for a moment 


^76 


CHANGING WINDS 


or two, to shout at them, “I say, the mater and MaryVe 
come up from Devon. I got a wire this afternoon. I’m 
not grubbing with you to-night. They want to go to a 
theatre, and I’ve got to climb into gaudy garments and go 
with them. . . 

He closed the door and ran up the stairs, but before 
he reached the first landing, Gilbert called after him, “I 
say, Ninian!” 

“Yes,” he answered, pausing on the stairs. 

“Bring them to dinner to-morrow night. Roger’s Cousin 
Rachel is coming, and we may as well make a party of it. 
Gaudy garments and liqueurs. Do you think they ’ll stay 
for the first night of my play?” 

“That’s one of the reasons why they’ve come up,” 
Ninian answered. 


2 

Rachel Wynne and Mrs. Graham and Mary dined with 
them on the following evening, and it seemed to Henry 
when he saw Mary entering Ninian ’s sitting-room that she 
was a stranger to him. He had known her as a child and 
as a young, self-conscious girl, but this Mary was a woman. 
He felt shy in her presence, and when, for a few moments, 
he was left alone with her, he hardly knew what to say to 
her. They had been “Quinny” and “Mary” to each other 
before, but now they avoided names. . . . He spoke tritely 
about her journey to London, reminding her of the slow- 
ness of the train between Whitcombe and Salisbury, and 
wondered whether she liked London better than Bovey- 
hayne. His old disability to say the things that were in his 
mind prevented him from re-establishing his intimacy 
with her. He tried to say, ‘ ‘ Hilloa, Mary ! ’ ’ but could not 
do so, and his shyness affected her so that she stood before 
him, fingering her fan nervously, and answering “Yes” 
and “Oh, yes!” and “No” and “Oh, no!” to all that he 
said. He liked the sweep of her hair across her brow and 


CHANGING WINDS 


the soft flush in her cheeks and the slender lines of her neck 
and the gleam of a gold chain that held a pendant sus- 
pended about her throat. He thought, too, that her eyes 
shone like lustres in the light, and suddenly, as he thought 
this, he felt that he could speak to her with his old free- 
dom. He moved towards her, shaping his lips to say, ‘ ‘ Oh, 
Mary, I . . .’^ but the door opened before he could speak, 
and Rachel Wynne entered the room with Roger and IMrs. 
Graham. 

“Yes, Quinny?’’ Mary said, saying his name quite easily 
now. 

He laughed nervously and looked at the others. “IVe 
forgotten what I was going to say,^^ he said, and went 
forward to greet Mrs. Graham. 

“My cousin, Rachel Wynne,’’ said Roger, introducing 
her to him. 

Rachel Wynne was a tall, thin girl, with a curious 
tightened look, as if she were keeping a close hold on her- 
self. When she held out her hand to him, he had a sensa- 
tion of discomfort, not because her clasp was firm, but 
because she seemed to be looking, not through him, but into 
him. He was very sensitive to the opinion of people 
about him, feeling very quickly the dislike of any one who 
did not care for him, and in a moment he knew that Rachel 
Wynne was antipathetic to him. Henry was always rude 
to people whom he disliked ... he could not be civil to 
them, however hard he might try to be so, but his feeling in 
the presence of people who disliked him, was one of power- 
lessness: he was tongue-tied and nervous and very dull, 
and his faculties seemed to shrivel up. There was a look of 
cold efliciency about Rachel Wynne that frightened him. 
She seemed to be incapable of wasting time or of wayward- 
ness. Her career at Newnham, Roger had told him, had 
been one of steady brilliance. “There wasn’t a flicker in 
it,” he had said to Henry. “Rachel’s always well- 
trimmed ! ’ ’ 

There were no ragged edges about Rachel Wynne. Her 


278 


CHANGING WINDS 


frock was neatly made, so neatly that he was unaware of 
it, and her hair was bound tightly to her head by a black 
velvet ribbon. She had a look of cold tidiness, as if she 
had been frozen into her shape and could not be thawed 
out of it; but she was not cold in spirit, as he discovered 
during dinner when the conversation shifted from general- 
ities about themselves to the work she had lately been 
doing. They had been talking about Gilbert’s play, and 
then Mrs. Graham had turned to Henry and told him how 
much she liked his novels. Her tastes were simple, and 
she preferred ‘‘Broken Spears” to “Drusilla.” “Of 
course, ‘Drusilla’ is very clever!” she said a little depre- 
catingly, and then she turned to Rachel and asked her 
whether she had read Henry’s novels. 

“No,” Rachel answered. “I very seldom read nov- 
els! . . 

He felt contempt for her. Now he knew why he had 
been chilled by her presence. She belonged to that order 
of prigs which will not read novels, preferring instead to 
read “serious” books. Such a woman would treat “Tom 
Jones” as a frivolous book, less illuminating than some 
tedious biography or history book. She might even deny 
that it had any illumination at all. . . . He could not pre- 
vent a sneer from his retort to her statement that she sel- 
dom read novels. 

“I suppose,” he said, “you think that novels are not 
sufficiently serious?” 

“Oh, no,” she answered quickly. “I just haven’t time 
for novel-reading!” 

That seemed to him to be worse than if she had said 
that she preferred to read solid books. A novel, in her 
imagination, was a light diversion in which one only in- 
dulged in times of unusual slackness. No wonder, he 
thought to himself, all reformers and serious people make 
such a mess of the social system when they despise and 
ignore the principal means of knowing the human spirit. 

“That’s a pity,” he said aloud. “I should have thought 


CHANGING WINDS 


m 

that you’d find novels useful to you in your work. I mean, 
there’s surely more chance of understanding the people 
of the eighteenth century if you read Fielding’s ‘Tom 
Jones’ than there is if you read Lecky’s ‘England in the 
Eighteenth Century.’ ” 

“Is there?” said Rachel. 

“Of course, there is,” Gilbert hurled at her from the 
other side of the table. “Fielding was an artist, inspired 
by God, but Lecky was simply a fact-pedlar, inspired by 
the Board of Education. Why even that dull ass, Richard- 
son, makes you understand more about his period than 
Lecky does ! ’ ’ 

“Perhaps,” said Rachel, in a tone which indicated that 
there was no doubt in her mind about the relative values 
of Lecky and Fielding. She turned to Henry. “I wish 
you’d write a book about the factory system,” she said. 
‘ ‘ That would be worth doing ! ’ ’ 

He disliked the suggestion that “Broken Spears” and 
“Drusilla” had not been worth doing, and he let his 
resentment of her attitude towards his work affect the 
tone of his voice as he answered, “I don’t know anything 
about factories!” 

“You should learn about them,” she retorted. 

No, he did not like this woman, aggressive and assertive. 
He turned to speak to Mary . . . but Rachel Wynne had 
not finished with him. 

“I’ve spent six months in the north of England,” she 
said, reaching for the salted almonds. “I’ve seen every 
kind of factory, model and otherwise!” 

“Oh, yes,” he answered, vaguely irritated by her. He 
wished that she would talk to her other neighbour and 
leave him in peace with Mary. As an Improved Tory, he 
knew that he ought to get all the information about fac- 
tories out of her that he could, but as Henry Quinn, he had 
no other desire than to be quit of her as quickly as possible. 

“And I think the model factories are no better than the 
rotten ones,” she went on. 


280 


CHANGING WINDS 


“What^s that you say?” Roger called to her from the 
other side of the table. 

She repeated her remark. ‘ ‘ I went over a model factory 
last week ... a cocoa and chocolate works . . . and I’d 
rather be a tramp than work in it,” she went on. 

‘‘But isn’t it rather wonderfully organised?” Roger 
asked. 

“Oh, yes, it’s marvellously arranged. There are baths 
and gymnasia and continuation classes and free medical 
inspection and model houses and savings banks and all the 
rest of it . . . but I’d rather be a tramp, I tell you. . . . 
You see, even with the best of employers, genuinely philan- 
thropic people eager to deal justly with the workers who 
make their fortunes for them, the factory system remains 
a rotten one. You can’t make a decent, human thing out 
of it because it’s fundamentally vile! ...” 

“My dear Rachel ! . . .” Roger began, but she would not 
listen to interruptions. 

“They look just as pale and ‘peeked’ in model factories 
as they do in bad ones. They’re cleaner, that’s all. The 
firm sees that they wash, but it can’t prevent them from 
becoming ill, and they’re all ill. They don’t look any bet- 
ter than the people in the bad factories. They look worse, 
because they’re cleaner and you can see their illness more 
easily. But that isn’t all. They have no hope of ever 
controlling the firm . . . they’ll never be allowed to own 
the factory . . . that will always belong to the Family. 
The best that the clever ones can look forward to is a little 
managership. Most of them can’t look forward to any- 
thing but being drilled and washed and medically in- 
spected and modelly housed and morally controlled. . . . 
Oh, it isn’t worth it, it isn’t worth it. I’d rather be a 
dirty, insanitary tramp 1 ’ ’ 

A kind of moral fury possessed her, and they sat still, 
listening to her without interrupting her. 

“I saw three girls at a machine,” she went on, “and one 
of them did some little thing to a chocolate box and then 


CHANGING WINDS 


S81 


passed it on to the second girl who did a further little thing 
to it and then passed it to the third girl who did another 
little thing to it, and then it was finished, and that was all. 
They do that every day, and the man who took me round 
told me that the firm had to catch ’em young, otherwise 
they can’t acquire the knack of it. I saw girls putting 
pieces of chocolate into tinfoil so quickly that you could 
hardly see their movements ; and they do that all day. And 
they have to be caught young . . . before they’ve properly 
tasted life. They wouldn’t do it otherwise, I suppose. 
That’s your factory system for you! And think of the 
things they produce. Chocolate boxes full of sweets ! 
There was one girl who spent the whole of her working 
days in pasting photographs of grinning chorus girls on to 
box-lids. I should go mad if I had to look at that soppy 
grin all day long. ...” 

Mrs. Graham murmured gently, but her words were not 
audible. Kachel would not have heard them if they had 
been. 

‘‘Well,” said Gilbert, “what do you want to do about 
it?” 

“I’m a reactionary,” Kachel answered. “I’m against 
all this . . . this progress. We’re simply eating up peo- 
ple’s lives, and paying meanly for them. I’d destroy all 
these factories . . . the whole lot. They aren’t worth the 
price. And I’d go back to decent piggery. What is the 
good of a plate when it means that some girl has been 
poisoned so that it can be bought cheaply?” 

“But we must have plates?” Henry said. 

“Why?” she retorted. 

“Well!” he rejoined, smiling at her as one smiles at a 
foolish child. 

“Oh, I know,” she went on, “you think I’m talking 
wildly. I’ve heard all about your Improved Toryism. 
Roger’s told me about it. You all think that you are the 
anointed ones, and that the bulk of people are born to do 
what they’re told. You won’t have whips for your slaves 


282 


CHANGING WINDS 


. . . you 11 have statutes. You won’t sell them . . . you 11 
socialise them. Cogs in wheels, you’ll make them ! Oh, it 
isn’t worth while living like that. You don’t even let a 
man do a whole job . . . you only let him do a part of one, 
and you’re trying to turn him into an automaton more and 
more every day. He’s to press a button . . . and that’s 
all. Presently, he’ll he a button! ...” 

‘‘My dear Rachel,” Roger said, “you don’t imagine, do 
you, that the whole world’s going to turn back to . . . 
piggery as you call it? We’ve spent centuries in creating 
this civilisation. ...” 

“Is it worth while?” she demanded. 

“Yes. . . .” 

“Prove it,” she insisted. 

“Well, of course, that’s a job, isn’t it? I can’t prove it 
in a few minutes. ...” 

“You can’t prove it, Roger,” she interrupted. “If all 
this civilisation were worth while, you wouldn’t need to 
prove it: it would be obvious. We’d only have to look out 
of the door to see the proof. ’ ’ 

“I don’t say that the factory system is satisfactory at 
present. It isn’t; but it can be improved. ...” 

“No, it can’t, Roger. It’s unimprovable. I dare you to 
go to any model factory in England and study it with an 
honest mind and then say that it is worth while. It makes 
the people ill . . . they get no pleasure out of their 
work. ...” 

“We could shorten the hours in factories,” Henry sug- 
gested. 

“If you do that, you admit that the thing is rotten, and 
can only be endured in short shifts!” she retorted. “And 
who wants his hours reduced? A healthy man wants to 
work as long as he can stand up. I don’t want my hours 
reduced. I’ll go on working until I drop . . . but I 
wouldn’t work for two seconds if I didn’t like the job!” 
She turned again to Henry. “Why don’t you write a 
book exposing the factory system. It would be much more 


CHANGING WINDS 


283 


useful than all this lovey-dovey stuff. I’d give the world 
for a book like that ... as good as Tolstoy’s ‘War and 
Peace’ or ‘Dickens’s ‘Oliver Twist’! ...” 


3 

Mary had not spoken at all while Rachel harangued them 
on the question of the factory system, but that was not 
surprising, for Rachel had not given any of them a chance 
to say more than two or three words. In Ninian’s sitting- 
room, when Gilbert turned to her and asked her what she 
thought of factories, she blushed a little, conscious that 
they had all turned to look at her, and answered that she 
had never seen a factory. 

“Never seen a factory!” Rachel exclaimed, and was off 
again in denunciation. 

Henry went and sat beside Mary while Rachel told tales 
of sweaters that caused Mrs. Graham to cry out with pain. 

“Mary!” he said to her under his breath. 

“Yes, Quinny,” she answered, turning towards him and 
speaking as softly as he had spoken. 

He fumbled for words. “It’s . . . it’s awfully nice to 
see you again,” he said. 

“It’s nice to see you all again,” she replied. 

“You’re . . . you’re so different,” he went on. 

“Am I?” She paused armoment, and then, smiling at 
him, said, “So are you.” 

“Am I very different?” he asked. 

‘ ‘ In some ways. Y ou ’re quite famous now, aren ’t you ? ’ ’ 

“Famous?” he said vaguely. 

“Yes. Your novels. ...” 

He laughed. “Oh, dear no, not anything like famous!” 

“Well-known, then.” 

“Moderately well-known. That’s all. But what’s the 
point?” 

“Well, that’s the point,” she replied. 


“You were only 


284 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘Quinny’ before, but now you're the moderately well-known 
novelist, and I'm afraid of you. ..." 

“Don't be absurd, Mary!" 

“But I am, Quinny. I read a review of one of your 
books in some paper, and it called you a very wise person, 
and said you knew a great deal about human nature or 
something of that sort. Well, one feels rather awful in the 
presence of a person like that. At least, I do I " 

He felt that she was chaffing him, and he did not want to 
be chaffed by her. He liked the “Quinny" and “Mary" 
attitude, and he wished that she would forget that he had 
written “wise" books. 

“You’re making fun of me," he said. 

“Oh, no, I’m not," she answered quickly. “I’m quite 
serious 1 ’ ' 

He did not answer for a few moments. He could hear 
Rachel 's passionate voice saying, ‘ ‘ They get seven shillings 
a week ... in theory. There are fines . . and he won- 
dered why it was that she repelled him. Her sincerity was 
palpable ... it was clear that she was hurt by the mis- 
eries of factory girls . . . but in spite of her sincerity, he 
felt that he could not bear to be near her. “If she'd only 
talk of something else, ’ ' he thought . . . and then returned 
to Mary. 

‘ ‘ Do you remember that time at Boveyhayne ? " he said. 

• “Which time?" she asked. 

“The first time." 

“Yes." 

He swallowed and then went on. “Do you remember 
what I said to you ... on the platform at Whitcombe?" 

She spoke more quickly and loudly as she answered him. 
“Oh, yes," she said, “we got engaged, didn’t we? We 
were kids! ..." 

Mrs. Graham caught the word “engaged." 

“Who's engaged?" she asked. 

“No one, mother," Mary answered. “Quinny and I 
were talking about the time when we were engaged! . . 


CHANGING WINDS 


285 


He felt a frightful fool. What on earth had possessed 
her that she should treat the matter in this fashion 1 

‘‘Were you engaged, dear?’’ Mrs. Graham said. 

“Oh, yes, mother. Don’t you remember? Of course, 
we were kids then! ...” 

Why did she insist on the fact that they were “kids” 
then? 

‘ ‘ I remember it, ’ ’ Ninian interjected. ‘ ‘ Old Quinny was 
frightfully sloppy over it. Oh, I say, I met Tom Arthurs 
to-day. He’s going to Southampton to-morrow. The Gi- 
gantic* s starting on her maiden, trip, and he’s going over 
with her. I wish to goodness I could go too 1 ’ ’ 

“Why don’t you?” Mrs. Graham said. It seemed to her 
too that if Ninian wished to do anything that was sufficient 
reason why he should be allowed to do it. 

“I can’t get away,” he answered. “We’re busier than 
we’ve ever been. But I’m going to Southampton to see 
the Gigantic start. The biggest boat in the world! My 
goodness! Tom’s awfully excited about it. You’d think 
the was his son ! ...” 

Henry thanked heaven that at last the conversation had 
veered from factories and his engagement to Mary. He 
tried to fasten it to the Gigantic, 

“What are you so busy about that you can’t go with 
Tom?” he asked. 

“Oh, heaps of things! Old Hare’s keen on building 
a Channel Tunnel, and he ’s spent a good deal of time work- 
ing the thing out ! ’ ’ 

Mrs. Graham had always imagined that the proposal to 
build a Tunnel between France and England was a joke, 
and she said so. 

“Good heavens, mother!” Ninian exclaimed. “Old 
Hare isn’t a joke. The thing’s as practicable as the Tup- 
penny Tube. People have been experimenting for half-a- 
century with it. Joke, indeed! They’ve made seven 
thousand soundings in forty years ! . . . ” 

“Really!” said Mrs. Graham. 


286 


CHANGING WINDS 


“And borings, too . . . lots of them ... in the bed of 
the Channel. TheyVe started a Tunnel, two thousand 
yards of it from Dover, under the sea, and there isnT a 
flaw in it. Hardly any water comes through, although 
there isn’t a lining to the walls . . . just the bare, grey 
chalk. I was awfully sick when I was told I couldn’t go 
to Harland and Wolff’s, but I don’t mind now. Build- 
ing a Channel Tunnel is as big a job as building the 
Gigantic any day, and Hare is as brainy as Tom Ar- 
thurs ! ’ ’ 

He became oratorical about the Channel Tunnel, and he 
told them stories of remarkable borings on both sides of the 
sea. 

‘ ‘ There ’s a big thick bed of grey chalk all the way from 
England to France,” he said, “and the water simply can’t 
get through it. They’ve made experimental tubes from 
our side and from the French side, and they let people into 
them, and it was all right. No mud, no water, no foul air 
. . . perfectly sound!” 

He quoted Sartiaux, the French engineer, and Sir Fran- 
cis Fox, the English engineer. “They don’t fool about 
with wildcat schemes, I can tell you. Why, Fox built the 
Mersey Tunnel and the Simplon Tunnel . . . and the 
Channel Tunnel is as easy as that!” 

There were to be two tubes, each capable of carrying the 
ordinary British railway, bored through a bed of cenomian 
chalk, two hundred feet thick on an average. 

“We could have an extra tunnel for motor-cars, if nec- 
essary!” said Ninian. “Just think of the difference 
there ’d be if we had the Tunnel. You could buzz from 
London to Paris in five or six hours without changing, and 
you’d never get seasick! ...” 

‘ ‘ That would be nice, ’ ’ said Mrs. Graham. 

“And you’d be safer in the Tunnel than you’d be on the 
Channel. There ’d be a hundred and fifty feet of water- 
tight chalk between you and the sea!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


287 


They argued about the Tunnel. How long would it take 
to construct? ‘‘Oh, six or seven years Ninian answered 
airily. “What about War? Supposing England and 
France went to War with each other ?’^ 

“We could flood a long section of the Tunnel from our 
side, and they couldn’t pump the water out from theirs,” 
he answered. ‘ ‘ Of course, I don ’t know much about it, but 
when you get chaps like Hare and Sartiaux and Fox talk- 
ing seriously about it, you listen seriously to them. Any- 
how, I do. Old Hare told me yesterday I was getting on 
nicely! ...” 

Mrs. Graham was delighted. “Did he, dear?” she bur- 
bled at Ninian. 

“Yes,” Ninian answered, “he said I wasn’t such an ass 
as he’d thought I was. Oh, I’m getting on all right!” 


4 

Henry sat back in his chair while they talked, and let 
his mind fill with thoughts of Mary. She was listening to 
Ninian, not as if she understood all that he was saying, but 
as if she were proud of him, and while he watched her, he 
felt his old affection for her surging up in his heart. He 
had described a young, fresh girl in “Drusilla,” and he 
had fallen in love with his description. Now, looking at 
Mary, he realised that unconsciously he had drawn her 
portrait. ‘ ‘ I must have been in love with her all the time, ’ ’ 
he thought, “even when I was running after Sheila Mor- 
gan!” 

He looked at her so steadily that she felt his gaze, and 
she turned to look at him. She smiled at him as she did so, 
and he smiled back at her. 

“Isn’t it interesting to hear about the Tunnel?” she 
said. 

“Eh? . . . Oh, yes! Yes. Awfully interesting. . . .” 


CHANGING WINDS 


jess 


5 

‘‘You know/^ said Roger when Mrs. Graham and Mary 
and Rachel had gone, “we really haven’t talked enough 
about this factory system. Rachel’s wild about it, of course 
. . . she’s a girl . . . but she’s got more sense on her side 
than we have on ours. It really isn’t any good ignoring 
it. It’s too big to be overlooked. I think we ought to have 
a course of talks about the whole thing. We could get 
people to come and tell us all they know. Rachel ’s got a lot 
of information. We could pick it out of her. And then 
there’s that woman . . . what’s her name . . . Me some- 
thing . . . who knows all about factories ... Me Me 
Me . . .” 

“Mary McArthur,” said Gilbert. 

“Yes. That’s her name. I wonder if she’d come and 
dine with us. You know, we haven’t had any women. 
That ’s an oversight, isn ’t it ? ” He walked towards the door 
as he spoke. “I’m going to bed now,” he said. “I’ve got 
a county court case in the morning at Croydon, and I shall 
have to get up early. Good-night!” 

“Good-night, Roger!” they murmured sleepily. 

“Oh, by the way,” he added, “Rachel and I are en- 
gaged. I thought I’d tell you!” 

He shut the door behind him. 


6 

They sat up, gaping at the closed door. 

“What’d he say?” said Ninian. 

“He says he’s engaged to that blooming orator!” Gil- 
bert answered. 

“But, damn it, why?” said Ninian. 

“And we’ve got the lease of this house for another two 
years!” Henry exclaimed. “I suppose he’ll want to get 
married and . . . all that!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


289 


They were silent for a while, contemplating this strange 
disruption of their affairs. 

‘‘Of course, people do get engaged!” said Ninian, and 
then he relapsed into silence. 

“I’ve been in love myself,” Gilbert said, “but . . . this 
is excessive. We ought to do something. Can’t we get up 
a memorial or something ? . . . ” 

Ninian sat upright, pointing a finger at them. “You 
know, chaps,” he exclaimed, “Roger’s ashamed of himself. 
He didn’t tell us ’til he’d got to the door, and then he damn 
well hooked it!” 

“He’s been trapped,” Gilbert said. “Females are al- 
ways trapping chaps ! . . . ” 

“We ought to save him from himself !” Ninian stood up 
as he spoke. 

“But supposing he doesn’t want to be saved?” Henry 
asked. 

“We’ll save him all the same,” Ninian answered. 

“Let’s go on a deputation to him,” Gilbert suggested. 
“We will put it reasonably to him. We’ll tell him that he 
mustn’t do this thing. . . . Oh, Lord, coves, it’s no good. 
This house is doomed. A female has done it ! ” 

“If it had been you, Gilbert, or Quinny,” said Ninian, 
“I’d have thought it was natural. You’re that sort ! But 
old Roger . . . well, there’s no doubt about it, God moves 
in a mysterious way. His wonders to perform. Let’s go to 
bed. I’m fed-up with everything!” 

7 

Henry switched off the light and got into bed. He shut 
his eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep would not come to him. 
He lay blinking at the ceiling for a while, and then he got 
up and went into his sitting-room and got out his manu- 
script and began to write. He wrote steadily for half-an- 
hour, and then he put down his pen and read over what he 
had written. 


290 


CHANGING WINDS 


^‘No/’ he said, crumpling the paper and throwing it into 
the wastepaper basket, “that won^t do!’^ 

He walked about the room for a few minutes, and then 
he went back to bed, and lay there with his hands clasped 
about his head. 

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t get married myself,” he 
said, and then he went to sleep. 


THE SEVENTH CHAPTER 


1 

In the morning, Ninian and Roger rose early, for Ninian 
was going to Southampton to see the Gigantic start on her 
maiden voyage to America, and Roger had a case at a 
county court outside London. In a vague way, Ninian had 
intended to talk to Roger about his engagement, to reason 
with him, as he put it. Gilbert had pointed out that the 
chief employment of women is to disrupt the friendships of 
men. “Men,^’ he had said to Ninian and Henry after 
Roger had gone to bed, “take years to make up a friendship, 
and then a female comes along and busts it up in a couple 
of weeks!’’ Ninian did not intend to let Miss Rachel 
Wynne break up their friendship, and he planned a long, 
comprehensive and settling conversation with Roger on the 
subject of females generally and of Rachel Wynne particu- 
larly. In bed, he had invented an extraordinarily con- 
vincing argument, before which Roger must collapse, but 
by the time he had finished shaving, the argument had van- 
ished from his mind, and his convincing speech shrivelled 
into a halting, “I say, Roger, old chap, it’s a bit thick, you 
know ! ’ ’ and even that ceased to exist when he saw Roger, 
with the Times propped against the sugar bowl, eating 
bacon and eggs as easily as if he had never betrothed him- 
self to any woman. 

“Hilloa, Roger!” said Ninian, sitting down at the table, 
and reaching for the toast. 

^ ‘ Hilloa, Ninian ! ’ ’ Roger murmured, without looking up. 

Magnolia entered with Ninian ’s breakfast and placed it 
before him. 


291 


CHANGING WINDS 




“Anything in the Times Ninian said, pouring out cof- 
fee. 

“Usual stuff. The bacon’s salt! ...” 

The time, Ninian thought, was hardly suitable for a few 
home-thrusting words on the subject of marriage, so he 
reminded Roger that he was going to Southampton. 

‘ ‘ Tom Arthurs has promised to show me over as much of 
the Gigantic as we can manage in a couple of hours. That 
won ’t be as much as I ’d like to see, but I ’ll try and go over 
her when she comes back from New York. Any mustard 
about?” 

“You’ll be back again to-night, I suppose?” 

“Probably. You’re right . . . this bacon is salt, damn 
it!” 

Roger rose from the table and moved to the window 
where he stood for a while looking out on the garden. It 
seemed to Ninian that in a moment or two he would speak 
of his engagement, and so he sat still, waiting for him to 
begin. 

“Well,” said Roger, turning away from the window and 
feeling for his watch, “I must be off. So long, Ninian !” 

He went out of the room quickly and in a little while, 
Ninian heard the street door banging behind him. 

“Damn,” he said to himself, “I’ve just remembered 
what I was going to say to him ! ’ ’ 

He had finished his breakfast and left the house before 
Gilbert and Henry came down from their rooms. Henry 
was too tired to talk much, and Gilbert, finding him un- 
communicative, made no effort to make conversation. He 
picked up the Times and contented himself with the morn- 
ing’s news, while Henry read a letter from John Marsh 
which had come by the first post. 

“7’m interested in your Improved Tories,^’ he wrote, 
“7 think the scheme is excellent. You sharpen your wits 
on other people' Sy and you keep in touch with all kinds of 
opinions. That's excellent! Your f other y and you, tooy 
used to say we were rather one-eyed in Ruhlin, and I think 


CHANGING WINDS 


£93 


there^s a good deal of truth in that, so Fm trying to get 
a group of people in Dublin to form a society somewhat 
similar to your Improved Tories. Did you ever meet a man 
called Arthur Griffiths when you were here? He is a very 
able, but not very sociable, man, and so people do not know 
him as well as they ought to .. . and his tongue is like a 
flail ... so that most of the people who do know him, 
don’t like him. The Nationalist M.P.’s detest him. Well, 
several years ago he founded a society which he called the 
Sinn Fein Movement, and the principle of the thing is ex- 
cellent up to a point. Do you remember any of your 
Gaelic? Sinn Fein means ^we ourselves,’ and that is the 
principle of the society. The object is to induce Irishmen 
to do for themselves, things that are done for them by 
Englishmen. It ought to appeal to your father. Griffiths 
got the idea, I think, fram Hungary. We’re to withdraw 
our representatives from the English parliament and start 
an Irish Government on the basis of a Grand Council of 
the County Councils. We’re to have our own consular 
service, our own National Bank and Stock Exchange and 
Civil Service, and a mercantile marine so that we can trade 
direct with other countries. And we’re to nationalise the 
railways and canals and bogs {which are to be reclaimed) 
and take over insurance and education and so forth. All 
this is to be done by the General Council of the County 
Councils in opposition to anything of the sort that is done 
by the English Government in preparation for the day 
when there is an Irish Government when, of course, the 
General Council will be merged in the Government. Oh, 
and we’re to have Protection, too! It seems rather a lot, 
doesn’t it? but the idea is excellent and, if modified con- 
siderably, fairly practical. Griffiths has antiquated notions 
of economics, however, and some of the things he says pre- 
vent me from joining him. His great idea is to attract 
capital to Ireland by telling capitalists how cheap Irish 
labour is. That seems to me to be an abominable proposal, 
likely to lead to something worse than Wigan and all those 


294 


CHANGING WINDS 


miserable English towns your father dislikes so heartily. 
And probably, of all his proposals, it is the most likely to 
succeed. That’s why I’m opposed to him at present. 1 
cannot bear the thought of seeing England duplicated in 
Ireland. But the scheme has merit, and Galway and I are 
plotting to capture the movement from Griffiths. We think 
that if we could graft the Sinn Fein on to the Gaelic 
League, we’d be on the way to establishing Irish independ- 
ence. Our people are becoming very materialistic, anid we 
must quicken their spirits again somehow. Douglas Hyde 
is the trouble, of course. He wants to keep the Gaelic 
League clear of politics. As if you can possibly keep pol- 
itics out of anything in Ireland! We want to mahe every 
Gaelic Leaguer a conscious rebel against English beliefs and 
English habits. I wish you’d come over and join us. It’ll 
be very hard, but exhilarating, work. You’ve no notion of 
how sordid and money-grubbing and English the mass of 
our people are becoming. It’s a man’s job to destroy that 
spirit and revive the old, careless, generous, God-loving 
Irish one. . . .” 

Still harping on that old nationality,’^ Henry thought 
to himself, when he had finished reading the .letter. 

He was in no mood for thoughts on Ireland. His mind 
was still full of the idea that had come into his head the 
previous night. Why should he not get married? The 
idea attracted and repelled him. It would, he thought, be 
very pleasant to live with . . . with Mary, say ... to love 
her and be loved by her . . . very pleasant . . . but one 
would have to accept responsibilities, and there would prob- 
ably be children. He would dislike having to leave Ninian 
and Roger and Gilbert, particularly Gilbert, and his share 
in the meetings of the Improved Tories would begin to 
dwindle. On the other hand, there would be Mary. . . 
If he were to lose his friends and the careless, cultured life 
they led in the Bloomsbury house, he would gain Mary, 
and perhaps she would more than compensate for them. . . . 


CHANGING WINDS 


295 


Gilbert interrupted his thoughts. 

“Rum go, this about Roger, isn^t it?’^ he said. 

Henry nodded his head. “I hadn’t any idea of it,” he 
replied. “I’d never even heard of her until he said she was 
coming to dinner ! ” 

“I had,” Gilbert said, “but I didn’t think he was going 
to let the life force catch hold of him. Close chap, Roger ! 
He never gives himself away . . . and that’s the sort that’s 
most romantic. You and I are obviously sloppy, Quinny, 
but somehow we miss all the messes that reticent, close 
chaps like Roger fall into. You don’t much like her, do 
you?” 

“Well, I’m not what you might call smitten by her, but 
that ’s because she seems to think I ’m wasting time in writ- 
ing novels. She ’s too strenuous for me. I like women who 
relax sometimes. She’ll orate to him every night, just as 
she orated to us, about people’s wrongs. ...” 

“Mind, she’s clever!” said Gilbert. 

“Oh, I don’t deny that. That’s part of my case against 
her. Really and truly, Gilbert, do you like clever women ? ’ ’ 

“Really and truly, Quinny, I don’t. Perhaps that’s not 
the way to put it. I like talking to clever women, but I 
shouldn’t like to marry one of them. I’m clever myself, 
and perhaps that’s why. There isn’t room for more than 
one clever person in a family, and I think a clever man 
should marry an intelligently stupid woman, and vice versa. 
You can argue with clever women, but you can’t kiss them 
or flirt with them. All the clever ones I’ve ever known 
have had something hard in them . . . like a lump of steel. 
Men aren’t like that! They can be hard, of course, but 
they aren’t always exhibiting their hardness. Clever 
women are.” 

Henry tossed Marsh’s letter across the table to Gilbert. 

“Read that,” he said, “while I look through the Times 

They both rose from the table, and sat for a while in the 
armchairs on either side of the fireplace. 


296 


CHANGING WINDS 


“You know, Quinny,’’ said Gilbert, as he took Marsh’s 
letter out of its envelope, “I often think we’re awfully 
young, all of us!” 

“Young?” 

“Yes. Immature . . . and all that. We’re frightfully 
clever, of course, but really we don’t know much, and yet 
you’re writing books and I’m writing plays and Ninian’s 
building Tunnels and Koger’s playing ducks and drakes 
with the law . . . and not one of us is thirty yet. Lord, 
I wish Roger hadn’t got engaged. That sort of thing 
makes a man think 1 ’ ’ 

He read Marsh’s letter and then passed it back to Henry. 

“Seems all right,” he said. “It’s a pity those Irish 
fellows haven’t got a wider outlook. Sitting there fussing 
over their mouldy island when there’s the whole world to 
fuss over ! I must be off soon. There ’s a rehearsal of my 
play this morning. ...” 

“I say, Gilbert,” Henry interrupted, “do you think I 
ought to go and join this Irish Renascence business?” 

“How can I tell? It probably won’t amount to much. 
I should take an intelligent interest in it, if I were you. 
Perhaps you can induce Marsh to come over and talk to 
the Improved Tories about it. What are you doing this 
morning ? ” 

“Oh, working!” 

“Well, so long!” 

“So long, Gilbert. You’ll be back to lunch, I suppose?” 

“I don’t think so. The rehearsals are very long now. 
You see, the play’s to be done on Wednesday. ...” 

2 

When Gilbert had gone, Henry, having glanced through 
the Times, went up to his room and began to write, but he 
did not continue at his manuscript for very long. The 
words would not roll lightly off his pen: they fell off and 
lay inertly about the paper. He was accustomed now to 


CHANGING WINDS 




periods during which his mind seemed to have lost its 
power to operate, and he was not alarmed by them. He 
knew that it was useless to attempt to do any work that 
morning, so he left his room and, telling Mrs. Clutters that 
he would not return to lunch, went out of the house and 
wandered about the streets for a while without any pur- 
pose. It was not until he saw the sign on a passing motor- 
’bus that he decided on what he should do. “Hyde Park 
Corner’^ was on the sign, and he called to the conductor 
and presently mounted to the roof of the ^bus and was 
driven towards the Park. 

* ‘ I wonder, ’ ^ he thought to himself, ‘ ^ whether I shall see 
Lady Cecily to-day ! ’ ’ 

Lady Cecily had curiously disappeared from their lives. 
Gilbert, absorbed in the production of his play, had not 
spoken of her again, nor had he made any mention of his 
proposal to leave London and go to Anglesey. He had re- 
signed from the staff of the Daily Echo, and, since he no 
longer attended first-nights at the theatre, he had not seen 
Lady Cecily since the night on which “The Ideal Hus- 
band’^ was revived. Henry had said to himself on several 
occasions that he would go and see Lady Cecily, but he 
had not done so. He did not care to go alone, and he eared 
less to ask Gilbert to go with him . . . but to-day, as sud- 
denly as she had quitted his thoughts. Lady Cecily came 
into them again, and, as he sat on top of the omnibus, he 
hoped that he would see her in the Park. “If not,’^ he 
said to himself, “ITl call on her this afternoon!” 

He descended from the ^bus at Hyde Park Corner and 
hastily entered the Park. He crossed to the Achilles mon- 
ument and debated with himself as to whether he should 
sit down or walk about, and decided to sit down. If Lady 
Cecily were in the Park, he told himself, she would pass his 
chair some time during the morning. He chose a seat near 
the railings and sat down and waited. There was a con- 
tinual flow of carriages and cars, but none of them con- 
tained Lady Cecily, and' when he had been sitting for al- 


298 


CHANGING WINDS 


most an hour, he told himself that he was not likely to see 
her that morning. He rose, as he said this to himself, and 
turned to walk across the grass towards Rotten Row, and 
as he turned, he saw Jimphy. He was not anxious to meet 
Jimphy again, and he pretended not to see him, but Jimphy 
came up to him, smiling affably, and said “Hilloa, Quinn, 
old chap!’’ so he had to be as amiable as he could in re- 
sponse to the greeting. 

Jimphy wanted to know why it was that he and Henry 
had not met again since the night that ‘‘Cecily let a chap 
in for a damn play,” and reminded him of their engage- 
ment to visit the Empire together. “Anyhow,” he said, 
“you can come and lunch with us. Cecily ’ll be glad to see 
you. I said I’d come home to lunch if I could find some 
one worth bringing with me, so that ’s all right 1 ’ ’ 

“How is Lady Cecily?” Henry asked, as he and Jimphy 
left the Park together. 

“Oh, C expect she’s all right,” Jimphy answered. “I 
forgot to ask this morning, but if she ’d been seedy or any- 
thing she’d have told me about it, so I suppose she’s all 
right!” 

“When’s this play of Parlow’s coming on?” Jimphy 
asked on the doorstep of his house. 

“Wednesday,” Henry answered. 

“Cecily’s made me promise to go and see it with her. 
What sort of a piece is it ? ” 

They entered the house as he spoke. 

“It’s excellent. ...” 

“Is it comic?” 

“Well, I suppose it is. He calls it a comedy,” Henry 
said. 

“So long as there’s a laugh in it, I don’t mind going to 
see it. I can’t stand these weepy bits. ‘Hamlet’ and that 
sort of stuff. Enough to give a chap the pip ! Oh, here ’s 
Cecily!” 

Henry turned to look up the stairs down which Lady 
Cecily was coming, and then he went forward to greet her. 


CHANGING WINDS 


299 


‘ ‘ How nice of you, ’ ’ she said. ^ ‘ Has Gilbert come, too ? ” 

“No,'^ he answered, chilled by her question. “He has 
a rehearsal this morning ! ’ ’ 

“Oh, yes, of course,’’ she said. “His play! I forgot. 
We’re going to see it on Wednesday. I hope it’s good!” 

“It’s very good,” Henry replied. 

3 

Jimphy left them after lunch. He was awfully sorry, 
old chap, to have to tear himself away and all that, but the 
fact was he had an appointment ... an important ap- 
pointment . . . and of course a chap had to keep an im- 
portant appointment. . . . 

“We’ll forgive yon, Jimphy!” Lady Cecily said, and 
then he went away, begging Henry to remember that they 
must go to the Empire together one night. 

“Well?” said Lady Cecily when her husband had gone, 
“how are you all getting on?” 

She was reclining on a couch, with her feet resting on 
a cushion, and as she asked her question she pointed to an- 
other cushion lying on a chair. He fetched it and put it 
behind her back. 

“Splendidly,” he answered. “Is that right?” 

She settled herself more comfortably. “Yes, thanks,” 
she said. “I read your novel,” she went on. 

“Did you like it?” 

“Oh, yes. Of course, I liked it. I suppose you’re writ- 
ing another book now!” He nodded his head, and she 
went on. “I wish I could write books, but of course I 
can’t. Mr. Lensley says I live books. Isn’t that nice of 
him? Do you put real people in your books, or do you 
make them all up? Do you know, I think I’ll have an- 
other cigarette!” 

He passed the box of cigarettes to her and held it while 
she made up her mind whether she would smoke an Egyp- 
tian or a Turkish. Her delicate fingers moved indeci- 


300 


CHANGING WINDS 


sively from the one brand to the other. “You like Turk- 
ish, don’t you?” he said, wishing that he could take her 
slender hand in his and hold it forever. 

“Choose one for me,” she said, capriciously, lying back 
and clasping her hands about her head. 

He took a cigarette from the box and offered it to her, 
but she did not hold out her hand to take it, and he under- 
stood that he was to place it between her lips. His fingers 
trembled as he did so, and he turned hurriedly to find the 
matches. 

‘ ‘ Behind you, ’ ’ she said, and he turned and picked them 

up. 

He lit a match and held it to her cigarette, and while he 
held it, her fingers touched his. She had taken hold of the 
cigarette to remove it from her lips. . . . He blew out the 
light and threw the match into the ash-tray, and then went 
and sat down in the deep chair in which he had been sitting 
when she asked him to get the cushion for her. 

“Why didn’t you call before?” she said, lazily blowing 
the smoke up into the air. 

It was difficult to say why he had not called before, so 
he answered vaguely. There had been so much to do of 

late. . . . 

“And Gilbert? He doesn’t rehearse all day long, does 
he?” 

“No, not all day, but he’s pretty tired by the time he 
gets home. ’ ’ 

“Why didn’t he come to the Savoy that night?” she 
asked. 

He wished she would not talk about Gilbert. He could 
not tell her the real reason why Gilbert had not kept his 
promise to join the supper-party and he was a poor hand 
at inventing convincing lies. 

“There was some trouble at his office, I think,” he said, 
“and he couldn’t get away until too late! ...” 

“He didn’t write or come to see me!” she protested. 

It was probable that Gilbert forgot his duty in the ex- 


CHANGING WINDS 


301 


citement of hearing that his play was to be produced. . . . 

“I suppose so/^ she said. 

She talked to him about his books and about Ireland. 
She had been to Dublin once and had gone to the Vice- 
regal Lodge . . . Lady Dundrum had taken her to some 
function there . . . and she was eager for the tittle-tattle 
of the Court. Was it true that Lord Kelpie was indifferent 
to his lady? . . . Henry knew very little of the Dublin 
gossip. “I haven’t been there since I left Trinity,” he 
said, in explanation, ^‘and the only people who write to me 
don’t take any interest in Court functions!” 

He rose to go, but she asked him to stay to tea with her, 
and so he remained. 

‘‘I don’t suppose any one will call,” she said, ^^but in 
case . . .” 

She told a servant that she was ‘‘not at home” to any 
one, and Henry, wondering why she had done so, felt 
vaguely flattered and as vaguely nervous. Her beauty 
fllled him with desire and apprehension and left him half 
eager, half afraid to be alone with her. He understood 
Gilbert’s fear that if he yielded to Cecily, she would de- 
stroy him. There was something in this woman that over- 
powered the senses, that made a man as will-less as a log, 
and left him in the end, spent, exhausted, incapable. He 
saw the danger that had frightened Gilbert, but he could 
not make up his mind to run away from it. There was 
something so exquisitely sensual in her look as she lay on 
the couch, looking at him and chattering in the Lensley 
style, that he felt inclined to yield himself to her, even if 
in yielding he should lose everything. 

“Of course,” he said to himself, “this is all imagination. 
She doesn’t want me at all . . . she wants Gilbert!” 

She asked for another cigarette, and he took one and 
placed it in her lips and lit it for her, and again his fingers 
touched hers, and again he trembled with unaccountable 
emotion. As he bent over her, holding the match to the 
cigarette, he felt the blood rushing to his head and for a 


302 


CHANGING WINDS 


moment or two his eyes were blurred and he could not see 
clearly. Then his eyes cleared and he saw that she was 
looking steadily at him, and he knew that she understood 
what was passing in his mind. He dropped the match on 
to the ash-tray and bent a little nearer to her. He would 
take her in his arms, he said to himself, and hold her 
tightly to him. ... 

“Won’t you sit down,” she said, pointing to his chair. 

He straightened himself, but did not move away. His 
eyes were still intent on hers, as if he could not avoid her 
gaze, and for a while neither of them spoke or moved. 
Then she smiled at him. 

“You’re a funny boy,” she said. “Won’t you sit 
down!” and again she pointed to the chair. 

His answer was so low that he could hardly hear him- 
self speak, and at first he thought she had not heard him. 
“I’d better go,” he said. 

“Not yet,” she answered. “You needn’t go yet!” 

“I’d better. ...” 

She put out her hand and made him sit down. 

“There’s no hurry,” she said. 

He leant back in his chair, resting his elbows on the arms 
of it and folding his fingers under his chin. 

“You look frightened, ’’-she said. 

“I am,” he answered. 

“Of me?” He nodded his head, and she laughed. 
“How absurd !” she said. “I’m not a bit terrifying. ...” 

He was not trembling now. He felt quite calm, as if he 
had resigned himself to what must be. 

“No, I ... I know you’re not,” he said, “only . . .” 

“Only what?” 

“I don’t know!” 

She put her cigarette down and turned slightly towards 
him. 

“Funny boy!” she said. “Funny Irish boy!” 

He smiled foolishly at her, but did not answer. He knew 


CHANGING WINDS 


303 


that if he spoke at all, he would say wild things that could 
not be withdrawn or explained away. 

‘ ‘ Funny scared Irish boy ! ’ ’ she said, and he could see the 
mockery in her eyes. “Such a frightened Irish boy! . . .’’ 

He could hold out no longer. She had put her hand out 
towards him . . . why he could not tell . . . and impul- 
sively he seized it and clasped it tightly in his. His grasp 
must have hurt her, for she cried a little and tried to with- 
draw her hand, but he would not let go his hold of it until, 
kneeling beside her, he had put his arms about her and 
kissed her. 

“I love you,’^ he said. “You know I love you. . . .’’ 

“Don^t!’^ 

‘ ‘ I loved you the minute I set eyes on you, and I wanted 
to meet you again . . . and then I was jealous of Gilbert 
because you took so much notice of him and so little of me, 
and ... I love you, I love you 1 ’ ’ 

She thrust him from her. “You’re hurting me,” she 
said, and she panted as she spoke. 

“I want to hurt you,” he answered. 

“But you mustn’t. ...” 

He did not let her finish her sentence. He pressed his 
lips hard on hers until his strength seemed to pass away 
from him. He felt in some strange way that her eyes were 
closed and that she was moaning. . . . 

He put his arms about her again, and drew her head 
gently on to his breast. “My dear,” he said softly, bend- 
ing over her and kissing her hair. 

She lay very still in his arms, so still that he thought she 
had fallen asleep. Her long lashes trembled a little, and 
then she opened her eyes, sighing contentedly as she did 
so. He smiled down at her, and she smiled in response. 
Then she put her hand up and stroked his cheek and rufSed 
his hair. 

“Funny Irish boy!” she said again. 


304 


CHANGING WINDS 


4 

He climbed on to a ’bus which bore him eastwards. It 
was impossible, in his state of exaltation, to go home and eat 
in the company of the others. Ninian would probably be 
back from Southampton, unbalanced with admiration for 
Tom Arthurs and the Gigantic, and then Gilbert would tell 
him how Sir Geoffrey Mundane had behaved during the re- 
hearsal and how exasperating Mrs. Michael Gordon, the 
leading lady, had been. ‘‘She’s brilliant, of course,” he had 
said about her once, “but if I were her husband I’d beat 
her!” He could not endure the thought of spending the 
evening in the customary company of his friends. They 
would want to talk, they would draw him into the con- 
versation, and he neither wished to talk nor to listen. His 
desire was only to remember, to go over again in his mind 
that long, passionate afternoon with Cecily. ... So he had 
telephoned to Mrs. Clutters telling her that he would not 
be in to dinner, and then, climbing on to a ’bus, had al- 
lowed himself to be carried eastwards, not knowing or car- 
ing whither he was being carried. 

He paid no heed to the other passengers on the ’bus, 
nor did he interest himself in the traffic of the streets. 
When the conductor came, demanding fares, he asked for 
a ticket to the terminus, but did not bother to ask where 
the terminus was. His mind was full of golden hair and 
warm, moist lips and soft, disturbing perfume and the 
touch of a shapely hand. Cecily had insisted on calling 
him “Paddy” because he was Irish and because so many 
Englishmen are called “Henry,” and when he had left her, 
she had offered her lips to him and, when he had kissed 
her, had told him she would see him again soon. “When 
Gilbert’s play is done,” she said, and added, “Tell Gilbert 
I shall expect him to come and talk to me after the first 
act!” 

He had been jealous when she said that. “You don’t 


CHANGING WINDS 


305 


really care for me/’ he had said. “You really love Gil- 
bert ! ’ ’ 

“Of course I love Gilbert/’ she had answered, laughing 
at him and patting his cheek, “but I love you, too. I love 
lots of people ! . . . ” 

Then, ashamed of himself, he had left her. It was cad- 
dish of him to speak of Gilbert to her, for Gilbert was 
his friend and her lover. If one were to try and take a 
friend’s mistress from him, one should at least be silent 
about it. But how could he help these outbursts of jeal- 
ousy? He cared for Gilbert far more than he cared for 
any man . . . but he could not prevent himself from rag- 
ing at the thought that Gilbert had but to hold out his 
arms and Cecily would run to be clasped in them. “I’m a 
makeshift, ’ ’ he said to himself. ^ ‘ That ’s all ! ” 

But even if he were only a makeshift, that was better 
than being shut away from her love altogether. “I dare- 
say,” he thought, “she’s as fond of me as she is of any 
one!” and he wondered whether she really loved Gilbert. 
It was difficult for him to believe that she could yield so 
easily to him and love Gilbert deeply, and he soothed his 
conscience by telling himself that Cecily was one of those 
women who are in love with love, ready to accept kisses 
from any ardent youth who offers them to her. He re- 
membered his contribution to the discussion on women and 
the way in which he had insisted on infinite variety of ex- 
periences. Cecily was, as a woman, what he had wished 
to be as a man. We had to recognise the differences of 
nature, he had said, but somehow he did not greatly care 
to see his principle put into practice by Cecily. There was 
something very fine and dashing and Byronic and adven- 
turous in a man with a spacious spirit, but after all, women 
were women, and one did not like to think of adventuring 
women. He wanted to have Cecily to himself ... he did 
not wish to share her with Gilbert or with Jimphy or with 
any one, and it hardly seemed decent that Cecily should 


S06 


CHANGING WINDS 


wish to spread her affections over three men. ‘‘And there 
may be others, too ! ’ ^ All this talk about sex-equality had 
an equitable sound ... his intellect agreed that if men 
were to have amorous adventures, then women should have 
them too; if men were to be unfaithful without reproach, 
then women should be equally without reproach in their 
infidelity . . . but his instinct cried out against it. He 
wanted his woman to himself even though he might not 
keep himself for her alone. 

“And that’s the beginning and the end of the sex-ques- 
tion,” he said. “We simply aren’t willing to let women 
live on our level. In theory, the man who goes to a pros- 
titute is as bad as she is, but in practice, we don’t believe 
it, and women don’t believe it either, and nothing will ever 
make us believe it. And it’s the same with lovers and mis- 
tresses. It simply doesn’t seem decent to a man who keeps 
a mistress that his wife should have a lover. You can’t 
help having instincts! ...” 


5 

The ’bus drove over London Bridge and presently he 
found himself in the railway station. It was too early yet 
to eat, and he made up his mind to go for a walk through 
Southwark. None of them had ever been in the slums. 
They had set their minds against suggestions that they 
should live in Walworth or Whitechapel or Bethnal Green 
in order that they might get to know something of the lives 
of the very poor. “That’s simply slush,” Gilbert had 
said. “We shouldn’t live like them. We’d have four 
good meals every day and baths every morning, and we’d 
only feel virtuous and ‘smarmy’ and do-good-to-the-poor-y. 
My object is to get rid of slums, not to go and live in the 
damn things and encourage slum-owners by paying rent 
regularly. All those Settlement people . . . really, they ’re 
doing the heroic stunt for their own ends. They’ll go into 
parliament and say they have intimate knowledge of the 


CHANGING WINDS 


S07 


way in which the poor live because they’ve lived with them 
. . . and it’s all my eye, that stuff!” 

The notion had made a faint appeal to Henry, but he 
had not responded to it because of the way in which the 
others had sneered at it and because he liked pleasant sur- 
roundings. Once, in Dublin, he had wandered out of St. 
Stephens’s Green and found himself in the Combe, and 
the sights he had witnessed there had sickened him so that 
he had hurried away, and always thereafter had been care- 
ful not to enter side streets with which he was not fa- 
miliar. Now, he felt that he ought to see a London slum. 
One had to have a point of view about poor people, and 
it was difficult to have a point of view about people of 
whom one was almost totally ignorant. 

He walked slowly up the Borough High Street, uncer- 
tain of himself and of the district. He would want some- 
thing to eat presently, and if he were to venture too far 
into the slums that lay hidden behind St. George’s Church 
and the Elephant, he might have difficulty in finding a 
place where he could take a meal in comfort. He stood 
for a few moments outside the window of a shop in which 
sausages and steaks and onions were being fried. There 
was a thick, hot, steamy odour coming from the door that 
filled him with nausea, and he turned to move away, but 
as he did so, he saw two sickly boys, half naked, standing 
against the window with their mouths pressed close to the 
glass. They were eyeing the cooking food so hungrily that 
he felt pity for them, and he touched one of them on the 
shoulder and asked him if he would like something to eat. 
The boy looked at him, but did not answer, and his com- 
panion came shuffling to his side and eyed him too. 

“Wouldn’t you like some of that . . . that stuff!” 
Henry said, pointing to a great slab of thick pudding, 
padded with currants. 

One of the boys nodded his head, and Henry moved 
towards the door of the shop, bidding them both to follow 
him. 


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“Give these youngsters some of that pudding!’^ he said 
to the man behind the counter: a fat, flaccid man with a 
wet, steamy brow which he periodically wiped with a 
grimy towel. 

“ ’Ere!^’ said the man, cutting off large pieces of the 
pudding and passing it across the counter to the boys who 
took it, without speaking, and began to gnaw at it immedi- 
ately. 

“Wod you say for it, eih?” the man demanded. 

They mumbled unintelligibly, their mouths choked with 
the food. 

“Pore little kids, they donT know no better ! Nah, then, 
’op it, you two! That’ll be fourpence, sir!” 

Henry paid for the pudding and left the malodorous 
shop. The children were standing in the shadow outside, 
one of them eating wolflshly, while the other held the pud- 
ding in front of him, gaping at it. . . . 

“Don’t you like it?” Henry said, bending down to him. 

“ ’E can’t eat it, guv ’nor!” the other boy said. 

“Can’t eat it!” 

“No, guv ’nor, ’e can’t. I’ll ’ave to eat it for ’im. . . .” 

“But why can’t you eat?” Henry asked, turning to 
the boy who still gaped helplessly at the pudding. 

The child did not answer. He stared at the pudding, 
and then he stared at Henry, and as he did so, the pudding 
fell from his hands, and he became sick. . . . 

“ ’Ere, wod you chuckin’ it awy for?” the other boy 
said, dropping quickly to the ground and picking up the 
pudding. 

“He’s ill,” Henry said helplessly. 

“ ’E’s always ill,” the boy answered, stuffing pieces of 
the recovered pudding into his mouth. 

A policeman was standing at the comer, and Henry went 
to him and told him of the child’s plight. 

“Sick is ’e?” the constable exclaimed. 

“Yes,” Henry answered. “He looked hungry, poor lit- 


CHANGING WINDS 


309 


tie chap, and so I bought him some of the pudding they 
sell in that shop!’’ 

The policeman looked at him for a few moments. ‘‘Well, 
of course, you meant it kindly, sir!” he said, “but if I was 
you I wouldn’t do that again. If you’ll excuse me sayin’ 
it, sir, it was a damn silly thing to do ! ” 

“Why?” 

“Why! ’Alf the kids about ’ere is too ’ungry to eat. 
That kid ought to be in the ’ospital by rights. Don’t never 
give ’em no puddin ’ or stuff like that, sir. Their stomachs 
can’t stand it. Nah, then,” he said to the sick child, “you 
’op ’ome, young ’un. You didn’t ought to be ’angin’ about 
’ere, you know, upsettin’ the traffic an’ mykin’ a mess on 
the pyvement. Gow on ! Git aht of it ! ” 

The boys ran off, leaving Henry staring blankly after 
them. “ ’E’ll be all right, sir!” said the policeman. 
“It’s no good tryin’ to do nothink for ’em. They’re down, 
guv ’nor, an’ that’s all about it. I seen a lot of yooman 
nature down about ’ere, an’ you can tyke it from me, them 
kids is down an’ they’ll stay down, an’ that’s all you can 
say about it. Good-night, sir!” 

“Good-night!” said Henry. 

He moved away, feeling sick and miserable and angry. 

“It’s beastly,” he said to himself. “That’s what it is. 
Beastly!” 


6 

His mind was occupied by violent thoughts about the two 
children whom he had fed with currant pudding, and he 
did not observe what he was doing or where he was going. 
He was in a wide, dark street where there were tram-lines, 
but he could not remember seeing a tramcar pass by. He 
was tired and although he was not hungry, he was conscious 
of a missed meal, and he was thirsty. “I’d better turn 
back,” he said to himself, turning as he did so. He won- 


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dered where he was, and he resolved that he would ask the 
first policeman he met to tell him in what part of London 
he now was and what was the quickest way to get out of it. 

“It was silly of me to come here at all,’’ he murmured, 
and then he turned quickly and stared across the street. 

A woman had screamed somewhere near by ... on the 
other side of the street, he thought . . . and as he looked, 
he saw figures struggling, and then they parted and one 
of them, a woman, ran away towards a lamppost, holding 
her hands before her in an appealing fashion, and crying, 
“Oh, don’t! Don’t hit me! . . .” The other figure was 
that of a man, and as the woman shrank from him, the man 
advanced towards her with his fist uplifted. . . . 

Henry could feel himself shrinking back into the shadow. 

“He’s going to hit her,” he was saying to himself, and 
he closed his eyes, afraid lest he should see the man’s fist 
smashing into the woman’s face. He could hear a foul 
oath uttered by the man and the woman ’s scream as she re- 
treated still further from him . . . and then, trembling 
with fright, he ran across the street and thrust himself 
between them. “Oh, my God, what am I doing?” he 
moaned to himself as he stood in the glare of the yellow 
light that fell from the street lamp. He felt rather than 
saw that the woman had risen from the ground and run 
away the moment the man’s attention was distracted from 
her, and a shudder of fear ran through him as he realised 
that he was alone. He could see the man’s brutal face and 
his blazing, drink-inflamed eyes, and in the middle of his 
fear, he thought how ugly the man’s eyebrows were . . . 
one long, black line from eye to eye across the top of his 
nose. The man, his fist clenched and raised, advanced to- 
wards him. “He’s going to hit me now,” Henry thought. 
^ ‘ He ’ll knock me down and . . . and kick me ! . . . These 
people always kick you ! . . . ” 

He stood still waiting for the blow, mesmerised by the 
man’s blazing eyes; but the man, though his fist was still 
clenched, did not strike him. He reeled up to him so 


CHANGING WINDS 


311 


closely that Henry was sickened by the smell of his drink- 
sodden breath. ‘‘Fight for a woman, would you?” he 
shouted at him. “Eih? P’tect a woman, would 
you? ...” 

Henry wanted to laugh. The man was repeating phrases 
from melodramas ! . . . 

“Tyke a woman part, eih? I know you, you bloody 
toff! You . . . you think you’re a bloody ’ero, eih, 
p’tectin’ a woman from ’er ’usband!” He pushed Henry 
aside, almost falling on the pavement as he did so. “I’ve 
a goo ’ mind to break your bloody neck for you, see, bloody 
toff, interferin’ . . . ’usband an’ wife. See? Thash what 
I’ll do! . . .” 

He came again at Henry, but still he did not strike. He 
mumbled his melodramatic phrases, swaying in front of 
Henry, and threatening to break his neck and punch his 
jaw and give him a thick ear, but he did no more than 
that, and while he threatened, a crowd gathered out of the 
shadows, and a woman, with bare arms, touched Henry’s 
arm and drew him away from the drunken man. “You 
’op it, mister,” she said, “or you’ll get ’urt!” She 
pushed him out of the crowd, slapping a lad in the face 
who had jostled him and said, “Gawblimey, look at Percy !” 
and when she had got him away from them, she told him 
again to ’op it. 

“Thank you! . . .” he began. 

“Don’t you wyste no time, mister, but ’op it quick,” she 
interrupted, giving him a push forward. 

“But I don’t know where I am,” he replied. 

“Dunno w’ere you are! . . . Well, of course, you look 
like that! You’re in Bermondsey, mister, an’ if you tyke 
my advice you’ll go ’ome an’ sty ’ome. People like you 
didden ought to be let out alone! You go ’ome to your 
mother, sir! The first turnin’ on the right’ll bring you 
to the trams. . . .” 

He did as she told him, hurrying away from the dark 
street as quickly as he could. He was trembling. Every 


CHANGING WINDS 


sia 

nerve in his body seemed to be strained, and his eyes had 
the tired feel they always had when he was deeply agi- 
tated. 

‘‘My God,^^ he said, “what an ass I was to do that 
7 

Gilbert and Roger were sitting together when he got 
home. 

“Hilloa, Quinny!’’ Gilbert exclaimed as he looked at 
Henry’s white face. “What have you been up to?” 

He told them of his adventure in Bermondsey. 

“You do do some damn funny things, Quinny!” said 
Gilbert, going to the sideboard and getting out the whisky. 
“Here, have a drop of this stuff. You look completely 
pipped!” 

“I don’t think I should make a habit of knight-errantry, 
if I were you,” said Roger. “Not in slums at all events!” 

“Has Ninian come back yet?” Henry asked, sipping the 
whisky. 

“He’s gone to bed. The Gigantic got off all right, but 
there was trouble at the start. She fouled a cruiser or 
something. Ninian ’s full of it. He’ll tell you the whole 
rigmarole in the. morning. You’d better trot off to bed 
when you’ve drunk that, and for God’s sake, Quinny, don’t 
try to be heroic again. You’re not cut out for that sort of 
job! ...” 


THE EIGHTH CHAPTER 


1 

Mrs. Graham and Mary and Rachel Wynne dined with 
them on the first night of “The Magic Casement.’^ Rachel, 
fresh from a Care Committee, composed mostly of mem- 
bers of the Charity Organisation Society and the wives 
of prosperous tradesmen, was inclined to tell the world 
what she thought of it, but they diverted her mind from 
the iniquities of the Care Committee by congratulating 
her on her engagement to Roger. She blushed and gave 
her thanks in stammers, looking with bright, proud eyes 
at Roger; and when they saw how human she was, they 
forgot her hard efficiency and her sociological angers, and 
liked her. Gilbert urged her to tell them tales of the 
C.O.S. and the Care Committee, and rejoiced loudly when 
she described how she had discomfited a large, granitic 
woman . . . the Mayor’s wife . . . who had committed 
a flagrant breach of the law in her anxiety to pen- 
alise some unfortunate children whose father was an 
agitator. “If I were poor,” Rachel said, “I’d hit a 
C.O.S. person on sight! I’d hit it simply because it was 
a C.O.S. person! That would be evidence against it!” 
She enjoyed calling a C.O.S. person, “it,” and Henry felt 
that perhaps some of the difficulty with the Mayor’s wife 
was due to the pleasure that Rachel took in rubbing her 
up the wrong way.. He suggested that tactful treat- 
ment. . . . 

“You can’t be tactful with that kind of person,” she 
asserted instantly. “You can only be angry. You see, 
they love to badger poor people. It’s sheer delight to them 
to ask impertinent questions. There’s a big streak of 

313 


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CHANGING WINDS 


Torquemada in them. They’d have been Inquisitors if 
they’d been born in Spain when there were Inquisitors!” 
She paused for a second or two, and then went on rapidly. 
“I never thought of that before. Why, of course, that’s 
what they are. They’ve been reincarnated . . . you know, 
transmigration of souls . . . and that fat woman, Mrs. 
Smeale. ...” Mrs. Smeale was the Mayor’s wife . . . 
“was an Inquisitor before she was . . . was dug up again. 
I can see her beastly big face in a cowl, and hot pincers 
in her hands, plucking poor Protestants’ flesh off their 
bones . . . and she’s doing that now, using all the rotten 
rules and regulations as hot pincers to pluck the spirit 
out of the poor! Of course, she does it all for the best! 
So did the Inquisitors! She doesn’t want to undermine 
the moral character of the poor, and they didn’t want to 
let the poor heretic imperil his soul. ... I’d like to in- 
quisit her! ...” 

“There isn’t a word ‘inquisit,’ Kachel!” said Roger. 

“Well, there ought to be,” she answered. 

Henry pictured her, in her committee room, surrounded 
by hard women, opposing herself to them, fighting for 
people who were not of her class against people who were, 
and it seemed to him that Rachel was very valiant, even if 
she were tactless, much more valiant than he could be. 
Rachel belonged to the fearless, ungracious, blunt people 
who are not to be deterred from their purpose by ostracism 
or abuse, and Henry realised that such courage as hers must 
inevitably be accompanied by aggressiveness, a harsh in- 
sistence on one’s point of view, and worst of all, a sur- 
render of social charm and ease and the kindly regard of 
one’s friends. “I couldn’t do that,” he thought to him- 
self. It was easy enough to sneer at such people, to call 
them ‘ ‘ cranks, ’ ’ but indisputably they had the heroic spirit, 
the will to endure obloquy for their opinions. “I sup- 
pose,” he reflected, “the reason why one feels so angry 
with such people is partly that nine times out of ten they’re 
in the right, and partly that ten times out of ten they’ve 


CHANGING WINDS 


315 


got the pluck we haven’t got!” And he remembered that 
Witterton, a journalist whom he had met at the office of 
the Morning Record, had climbed on to the plinth in Tra- 
falgar Square during the Boer War and made a speech 
in denunciation of Chamberlain and the Rand lords, and 
had been badly mauled by the mob. ‘‘By God, that’s cour- 
age!” he murmured. That was the sort of person Rachel 
was. He could see her opposing herself to mobs, but he 
could not see himself doing so. Probably, he thought, he 
would be on the fringe of the crowd, mildly deprecating 
violence and tactlessness. . . . 

He came out of his ruminations to hear Mrs. Graham 
telling Rachel how pleased she was to hear that Roger 
and she were engaged. “My dear,” she said, “I’m very 
glad!” and then she kissed Rachel. 

‘ ‘ Come here, Roger, ’ ’ she added, and when he had ambled 
awkwardly up to her, she took his head in her hands and 
kissed him too. . . . 

“I’ve a jolly good mind to get engaged myself,” said 
Gilbert. 

“Well, why don’t you?” Mrs. Graham retorted. 

“I would, only I keep on forgetting about it,” he an- 
swered. ‘ ‘ Couldn ’t you kiss me ‘ Good-luck ’ to my play ? ’ ’ 

“I could,” she replied, and kissed him. 

Then they insisted that she should kiss them all, and 
she did as they insisted. She was very gracious and very 
charming and her eyes were bright with her pleasure in 
their youth and spirits ... so bright that presently she 
cried a little . . . and then they all talked quickly and 
kicked one another’s shins under the table in order to en- 
force tactful behaviour. 


2 

They sat in one of the two large boxes of the Pall Mall 
Theatre. Gilbert was nervous and restless, and after the 


316 


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play began, he retreated to the back of the box and sat 
down in a corner. 

“WhaCs up, Gilbert?^’ Henry whispered to him. ^‘Are 
you ill?’^ 

“111!” Gilbert exclaimed, looking up at Henry with a 
whimsical smile. “Man, Quinny, I’m dying! Go away 
like a good chap and let me die in peace. Tell all my 
friends that my last words were. ...” 

Henry went back to his seat beside Mary and whispered 
to her that Gilbert was too nervous and agitated to be 
sociable . . . “some sort of stage fright! ...” and they 
pretended not to notice that he was huddled in the darkest 
corner of the box. “Thank goodness,” Henry said to the 
others, “a novelist doesn’t get a storm of nerves on the 
day of publication!” Leaning over the edge of the box, 
he could see Lady Cecily sitting in the stalls, with Jimphy 
by her side . . . and for a while he forgot the play and 
Mary and Gilbert’s agitation. She was sitting forward, 
looking intently at the stage, and as he watched her, she 
laughed and turned to Jimphy as if she would share her 
pleasure with him, but Jimphy, lying back in his stall, was 
fiddling with his programme, utterly uninterested. She 
glanced up at the box, her eyes meeting his, and smiled at 
him. 

“Who is it?” said Mary, leaning towards him. 

“Oh . . . Lady Cecily Jayne!” he answered, discom- 
posed by her question. 

“She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?” 

“Yes.” 

They turned again to the stage and were silent until the 
end of the first act. There was a burst of laughter, and 
then the curtain descended, to rise again in quick response 
to the applause. 

“Cheering a chap at his funeral!” said Gilbert, groaning 
with delight as he listened to the shouts and handclaps. 

They turned to him and offered their congratulations. 


CHANGING WINDS 


317 


“Five curtain-calls,’^ said Koger. “Very satisfactory!” 

“ It ’s splendid, Gilbert, ’ ’ Mrs. Graham exclaimed. “I’m 
sure it’ll be a great success!” 

“Oh, dear, O Lord, I wish it were over!” Gilbert re- 
plied. 

“Let’s fill him with whisky,” said Ninian, rising and 
taking hold of Gilbert’s arm, and he and Henry took him 
and led him to the bar where they met Jimphy, looking like 
a lost rabbit. 

“Hilloa, Jimphy!” they exclaimed, and he turned glee- 
fully to welcome them. Here at all events was something 
he could comprehend. He congratulated Gilbert. “Jolly 
good, old chap ! Have a drink, ’ ’ he said, and insisted that 
they should join him at the bar. “Of course,” he added 
privately to Henry, “this sort of stuff isn’t really in my 
line . . . jolly good and all that, of course . . . but still 
it’s not in my line. All the same, a chap has to congratu- 
late a chap. Oh, Cecily wants you to go and talk to her. 
You know where she is, don’t you?” 

He turned to listen to Ninian who was describing the 
accident which had happened when the Gigantic started on 
her first trip to America. “She jolly near sank a cruiser,” 
he was saying as Henry moved away from the bar. ‘ ‘ That 
was the second accident. The first time, she broke from 
her moorings. ...” 

He pushed his way through the crowd of drinking and 
gossiping men, and entered the stalls. Lady Cecily saw 
him coming, and she beckoned to him. 

“Who is that nice girl in the box?” she asked, as he 
sat down in Jimphy ’s seat. “She sat beside you. ...” 

“Oh, Ninian ’s sister,” he replied. “Mary Graham.” 

“She’s very pretty, isn’t she?” 

“Yes. . . .” 

He would have said more, but it suddenly struck him as 
comical that Lady Cecily should speak of Mary almost in 
the words that Mary had used when she spoke of Lady 


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Cecily. He looked up at the box and saw that Mary was 
talking to her mother, and something in her attitude sent 
a pang through his heart. 

“I do love Mary.’^ he said to himself, “but somehow 
. . . somehow I love Cecily too!^’ 

Lady Cecily was speaking to him and he turned to 
listen. 

“I want you to introduce me to Ninian’s sister,’^ she said. 

“Yes,’’ he answered reluctantly, though he could not 
have said why he was reluctant to introduce her to Mary. 

“After the next act,” she went on, and he nodded his 
head. 

Then Jimphy returned, and Henry got up and left her, 
and hurried back to the box. The second act had begun 
when he reached it, and he tiptoed to his seat and sat 
down in silence. Mary looked round at him, smiling, and 
then looked back at the stage, and again he felt that odd 
reluctance to bring Lady Cecily and her together. 

3 

At the end of the second act, he turned to Mary and 
said, “Lady Cecily wants to be introduced to you. I said 
I’d bring her here after this act!” 

“Do,” Mary answered. 

As he walked towards the door of the box, he remembered 
Gilbert and he bent towards him and said quietly, “Oh, 
Gilbert, I’m going to fetch Lady Cecily. She wants to 
talk to Mary! . . .” 

“Righto!” Gilbert replied, without looking up. 

Henry hesitated. “You . . . you don’t mind, do you?” 
he said, and then wished that he had remained silent. 

“Mind!” Gilbert looked up. “Why should I mind?” 

“ I thought perhaps . . . but of course if you don ’t mind, 
that ’s all right ! ’ ’ 

He hurried out of the box, feeling that he had in- 


CHANGING WINDS 


319 


truded into private places. He had intended to be con- 
siderate and had achieved only the appearance of prying. 
‘^That’s like me!’^ he thought, as he descended the stairs 
that led to the stalls. “I wonder why it is that I’m full 
of sympathy and understanding and tact in my books, and 
such a clumsy fool in life!” 

He entered the stalls, and as he did so. Lady Cecily rose 
to join him. Jimphy had already gone to the bar. He 
held the curtain for her and she passed through. “Isn’t 
it clever?” she said, speaking of the play, and he nodded 
his head. The passage leading up from the stalls was 
full of chattering people, but when they reached the nar- 
row corridor which led to the box, there was no one 
about. ... 

“Cecily!” he said in a low voice. 

“Yes, Paddy!” she answered, looking back over her 
shoulder. 

He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to- 
wards him. 

“Some one will see you,” she said. 

“No, they won’t,” he replied, “and I don’t care. . . .” 

He kissed her ardently. “My dear!” he murmured with 
his lips on hers. 

She pushed him from her. “You are a fool,” she said. 

“I couldn’t help it!” 

Their voices were low lest the people in the box should 
hear them. 

“You must never do that again,” she said. “I’d never 
have forgiven you if any one had seen us!” 

“What are you afraid of, Cecily?” he asked. 

She made a gesture of despair. “Haven’t you any 
sense?” she said. 

She turned to go towards the box again, but he caught 
hold of her hand and held her. 

“Cecily,” he whispered, “you know I love you, don’t 
you?” 


sw 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Yes, yes,” she answered impatiently, snatching her 
hand from his, “but you needn't tell everybody about it!” 

“And you love me, too. Don't you?'' 

“Let’s go and join the others! ...” 

He held her again. “No, Cecily,” he said, ‘‘you must 
listen to me!” 

“Well, what is it?” 

“Cecily!” He was breathing hard, and it seemed to 
him that he could only speak by forcing words out of him- 
self. “Cecily . . . come with me! . . .” 

“That’s what I want to do, but you keep me hanging 
about here. If any one were to see us! . . .” 

“I don’t mean that,” he interrupted. “You know quite 
well what I mean! . . .” 

“What do you mean? I don’t know! . . .” 

He went closer to her, trying to waken her passion by 
the strength of his. “I want you to leave Jimphy and 
come away with me,” he said. 

“Leave Jimphy!” 

“Yes. You're not happy . . . you’re not suited to each 
other. Come with me ! ' ' 

“Like this?” she said, holding out her hands and mock- 
ing him. 

“That doesn’t matter,” he urged. “We’ll go some- 
where. ...” 

“Fly to Ireland, I suppose, in evening dress! Poor 
Paddy, you’re so Irish, aren’t you? Please don’t be an 
idiot ! ’ ’ 

She went on towards the door of the box, and he fol- 
lowed after her. ‘ ‘ Cecily ! ” he said. 

“Not to-night,” she answered. “I want to be intro- 
duced to that nice girl, Mary Graham, and I really must 
congratulate Gilbert ... I suppose he’s here ... it’s 
such a clever play!” 

She opened the door of the box and went in, and, hesi- 
tating for a moment, he went after her. 


CHANGING WINDS 


321 


4 

She stayed in the box, sitting between Mrs. Graham and 
Mary, until the end of the play. The curtain had gone 
down to applause and laughter and had been raised again 
and a third and fourth time, and then the audience had 
demanded that the author should appear. Somewhere in 
the gallery, they could hear the faint groan of the man 
who attends all first nights and groans on principle. ‘‘I’d 
like to punch that chap’s jaw!” Ninian muttered, glanc- 
ing up at the gallery indignantly. There was more ap- 
plause and a louder and more insistent shout of ‘ ‘ Author 1 
Author!” and the curtain went up, and Gilbert, very 
nervous and very pale, came on to the stage and bowed. 
Then, after another curtain call, the lights were lowered 
and the audience began to disperse. 

There was to be a supper party at the Carlton, because 
the Carlton was nearer to the Pall Mall than the Savoy, 
and Sir Geoffrey Mundane and Mrs. Michael Gordon had 
accepted Gilbert’s invitation to join them. “It’ll cost 
a hell of a lot, ’ ’ Gilbert said to Henry, ‘ ‘ but what ’s money 
for? When I die, they’ll put on my tombstone, ‘He loas 
horn in debt, he lived in debt, he died in debt, and he 
didnH care a damn. So be it I’ He extended his invita- 
tion to Jimphy and Lady Cecily. 

“You didn’t come to Jimphy ’s birthday party,” she 
objected. 

“Didn’t I?” he replied. “Well, both of you come to 
my party . . . that’ll make up for it!” 

Gilbert did not appear to be affected by Cecily’s pres- 
ence. He had greeted her naturally, behaving to her in 
as friendly a way as he would have behaved if she had 
been Mrs. Graham. Henry, remembering the scene on 
the Embankment, had difficulty in understanding Gilbert’s 
easy manner. Had he been in Gilbert ’s place, he knew that 
he would have been awkward, constrained, tongue-tied. 
Undoubtedly, Gilbert had savoir faire. So, too, had Cecily. 


322 


CHANGING WINDS 


Her look of irritation with Henry had disappeared as she 
entered the box. He, following after her, had been nervous 
and self-conscious, feeling that the flushed look on his face 
must betray him to his friends; but Cecily had none of 
these awkwardnesses. She behaved as easily as if the 
scene with Henry had not taken place. ‘‘You'd think she 
hadn't any feelings," he murmured to himself, and as he 
did so, it seemed to him that in that moment he knew 
Cecily, knew her once and for all. She had no feelings, 
no particular feelings for any one, not even for Gilbert. 
She was a beautiful animal, eager for emotional diver- 
sions, but indifferent to the creature that pleased her after 
it had pleased her. If Henry were to quit her now and 
never return to her, she might some day say, “I wonder 
where poor Paddy is ! " and turn carelessly to a new lover ; 
but that would be all. Gilbert had piqued her, perhaps, 
but he had done no more than that, though probably it 
was more than Henry could ever hope to do, and she had 
yawned a little with the tedium of waiting for him, and 
then had decided to yawn no more. . . . 

He fell among platitudes. “Like a butterfly," he said 
to himself. “Just like a damned butterfly!" 

Well, he thought, mentally cooler because of his revela- 
tion, that is an attitude towards life that has many ad- 
vantages. One might call Cecily a stoical amorist, an erotic 
philosopher. “Love where you can, and don't bother 
where you can't!" might serve her for a motto. “And, 
really, that's rather a good way of getting through these 
plaguey emotions of ours!" he told himself. “Only," he 
went on, “you can't walk in that way just because you 
think it's a good one!" 

He sat between Lady Cecily and Mary at supper, but he 
did not talk a great deal to either of them, for Mary was 
chattering excitedly to Sir Geoffrey Mundane, and Cecily 
was persuading Ninian that engineering had always been 
the passion of her life. “I quite agree," she was saying, 
“a Channel Tunnel would be very useful and . . . and so 


CHANGING WINDS 


323 

convenient, too. IVe often said that to Jimphy, but dear 
Jimphy doesn’t pretend to understand these things!” 
She had turned to him once and, in a whisper, had said, 
“Which of you is in love with Mary?” but he had pre- 
tended to be wooden and hard of understanding. 

“My dear Paddy,” she said, raising her eyebrows, “I 
believe you’re sulking ... just because I wouldn’t run 
away with you. You’re as bad as Gilbert!” 

“You’re perfectly brutal,” he said under his breath. 

^ ‘ Aren ’t you exaggerating ? ’ ’ she replied. ^ ^ And if I had 
gone off with you, we’d have missed this nice supper. 
Do be sociable, there’s a dear Paddy, and perhaps I’ll run 
away with you next Tuesday ! ’ ’ 

There was a babble of conversation about them, and 
much laughter, for Gilbert, reacting from his fright, was 
full of bright talk, and Sir Geoffrey, reminiscent, capped 
it with entertaining tales of dramatists and stage people. 
It was easy for Cecily and Henry to carry on their 
conversation in quiet tones without fear of being over- 
heard. 

“You treat me like a boy,” he said reproachfully. 

“You are a boy, Paddy dear, and a very nice boy!” 

“I suppose,” he retorted, “it’s impossible for you to 
understand that I love you. ...” 

“Indeed, it isn’t,” she interrupted. “I understand 
that quite easily. What I can’t understand is why you 
wish to spoil everything by silly proposals to ... to 
elope! . . .” 

“But I love you,” he insisted. “Isn’t that enough to 
make you understand?” 

She shook her head, and turned again to Ninian. 

“You see,” Ninian said, “you bore through this big bed 
of chalk from both sides. ...” 

“But how do you know the two ends will meet?” she 
asked. 

“Oh, engineers manage that sort of thing easily,” Ninian 
answered. “Think of the Simplon Tunnel! ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


324 


“Yes?’^ she said, to indicate that she was thinking of it. 

“Well, that met, didn’t it?” 

^ ‘ Did it ? ” she replied. ‘ ‘ Oh, but of course it must have 
met. I’ve been through it! . . .” 

“There was hardly an inch of divergence between the 
two ends,” he went on. . . . 

“Hell’s flames!” Henry said to himself. 

5 

“I must see you,” he said to her when the party had 
broken up and she was going home. “I must see you 
alone!” 

“I do hope you’re not going to be a nuisance, Paddy!” 
she replied. 

He put her cloak about her shoulders. “Will you meet 
me at the suspension bridge over the lake in St. James’s 
Park to-morrow at eleven? ...” 

“That’s awfully early, Paddy, and St. James’s Park is 
such a long way from everywhere. Couldn’t you come to 
lunch? Jimphy’ll be glad to see you. He seems to like 
you for some reason ! ’ ’ 

“I want to talk to you alone, and we’re not likely to 
be disturbed in St. James’s Park. You must come, Ce- 
cily ! ’ ’ 

“Oh, all right,” she answered. “But I shan’t be there 
before twelve. You can take me to lunch somewhere. ...” 

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll be at the bridge at twelve, 
and I’ll wait for you . . . only, come as soon as you can, 
Cecily!” 

‘ ‘ I can ’t think why you want to behave like this, Paddy. 
It’s so melodramatic. Gilbert was just the same! ...” 

He felt that he could hit her when she said that, and he 
turned away from her so quickly that her cloak slipped 
from her shoulders. 

“Oh, Paddy!” she exclaimed 


CHANGING WINDS 


325 


beg your pardon!’^ he answered, turning again and 
picking the cloak from the ground. 

‘‘You’re so . . . so selfish, ” she said. “You want every- 
thing to be just as you like it. You’re just like Gilbert 
. . . where is Gilbert? ... I must say good-night to him 
. . . and that nice girl, Mary. I think it’s a very clever 
play, and she ’s such a nice girl, too. Oh, Gilbert, there you 
are! Good-night! I’ve enjoyed everything so much . . . 
a nice play and a nice supper. Good-night, and do come 
and see me soon, won’t you. Why not come to-morrow 
with Paddy? ...” 

“Paddy?” said Gilbert. 

“Yes, Henry Quinn. I call him Paddy. It seems nat- 
ural to call him Paddy. He’s so Irish. Do come with him 
to-morrow, and bring all your press cuttings with you 
and read them to me. Paddy wants to talk to me. . . .” 

Henry walked away from them. What sort of woman 
was this? he asked himself. Was she totally insensitive? 
Was it impossible for her to realise that she was hurting 
him? . . . 

‘ ‘ Good-night, Quinny ! ’ ’ 

'ji He turned quickly to take Mary’s hand. 

' “We’re going back to Devonshire the day after to- 
morrow,” she said. 

“Are you?” he murmured vaguely. 

“Yes. Good-night, Quinny!” 

“Aren’t you tired?” he asked. 

“Oh, no,” she answered. “I’ve enjoyed myself awfully 
much. Here’s Ninian! He’s taking us back to our hotel. 
Good-night, Quinny!” 

He hesitated for a moment or two. He wanted to sug- 
gest that he should go with her instead of Ninian, but 
before he could speak he saw Cecily moving down the room 
towards the street. 

“Good-night, Mary!” was all he said. 


CHANGING WINDS 


6 

Roger had taken Rachel home, and so, when Ninian had 
gone off with his mother and Mary, there were only Henry 
and Gilbert left. 

“Let’s go home, Quinny,” Gilbert said. “I’d like to 
walk if you don’t mind!” 

“Very well,” Henry replied. 

They left the hotel and strolled across the street towards 
the National Gallery. 

“I wish it were the morning,” Gilbert said. “I want 
to see the newspapers!” 

“It doesn’t greatly matter what they say, does it?” 
Henry answered. “The play’s a success. The audience 
liked it.” 

“I want to read the notices all the same. Of course, 
I want to read them. I shall spend the whole of to-morrow 
reading and re-reading them. Just vanity!” 

They walked past the Gallery, and made their way 
through the complicated streets that lie behind the Strand, 
about Covent Garden, towards Bloomsbury. They did 
not speak for some time, for they were tired and their 
minds were too full of other things. Once indeed, Gilbert 
began to speak ... “I think I could improve the second 
act a little ...” but he did not finish his sentence, and 
Henry did not ask him to do so. It was not until they 
were nearly at their home that Henry spoke to Gilbert 
about Cecily. 

“Are you going to Lady Cecily’s to-morrow?” he said. 

“Eh?” Gilbert exclaimed, starting out of his dreams. 
“Oh, no, I think not! Why?” 

“I only wondered. She asked you, you know!” 

They walked on in silence until they reached the door 
of their house. 

“I say, Quinny,” said Gilbert, while Henry opened the 
door, “you seem to be very friendly with Cecily!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


327 


Henry fumbled with the key and muttered, “Damn this 
door, it won’t open!” 

‘ ‘ Let me try I . . . ” 

“It’s all right now. I’ve done it I What were you say • 
ing, Gilbert?” 

They entered the house, shutting the door behind them, 
and stood for a while in the hall, removing their hats and 
coats. 

“Oh, nothing,” Gilbert replied. “I was only saying 
you seemed very friendly with Cecily 1 ’ ’ 

“Well, yes, I suppose I am, but not more than most 
people. Are you going to bed now or will you wait up 
for Ninian and Roger?” 

“I shan’t sleep if I go to bed ... I’m too excited. I 
shall read for a while in my room . . . unless you’d like 
to jaw a bit 1” 

Henry shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’m too tired 
to jaw to-night. See you in the morning. Good-night, 
Gilbert!” 

' ‘ Good-night, Quinny ! ’ ’ 

Henry went to his bedroom, leaving Gilbert in the hall, 
and began to undress. His mind was full of a flat rage 
against Cecily. She had consented to meet him in St. 
James’s Park, and then, almost as she had made her 
promise, she had turned to Gilbert and had invited him 
to call on her, in his company, at the time she had appointed 
for his private meeting with her. He did not wish to see 
her again. “She’s fooling me,” he said, throwing his coat 
on to a chair so that it fell on to the ground where he let 
it lie. “I’ve not done a stroke of work for days on her 
account, and she cares no more for me than she does for 
. . . for anybody. I won’t go and meet her to-morrow, 
damn her ! I ’ll send a messenger to say I can ’t come, and 
then I’ll drop her. It isn’t worth while going through 
this . . . this agony for a woman who doesn’t care a curse 
for you!” 


328 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘I’m not going to be treated like this,” he went on to 
himself while he brushed his teeth. “I’m not going to 
hang about her and let her treat me as she pleases. She 
can get somebody else, some one who is more complacent 
than I am, and doesn’t feel things. I hope she goes to 
the Park and waits for me. Perhaps that’ll teach her to 
understand what a man feels like. ...” 

But of course she would not go to the Park and wait for 
him. He would send an express messenger with a note 
to tell her that he was unable to keep the appointment. 

“I’ll write it now,” he said to himself and he stopped 
in the middle of washing his face and hands to find note- 
paper. “Damn, my hands are wet,” he said aloud, and 
picked up a towel. 

“Dear Lady Cecily,^* he wrote, when he was dry, using 
the formal address because he wished to let her know that 
he was ill friends with her, “/am sorry I shall not he able 
to meet you to-day as we arranged last flight.” He won- 
dered what excuse he should make for breaking off the 
appointment, and then decided that he would not make any. 
“I won’t add anything else,” he said, and he signed him- 
self, Yours sincerely, Henry Quinn.^’ “She’ll know that 
I’m sick of this . . . messing about. I don’t see why I 
should explain myself to her!” 

He sealed the envelope and put the letter aside, and 
sat for a while drumming on his table with the pen. 

“Mary’s worth a dozen of her,” he said aloud, getting 
up and going to bed. 


THE NINTH CHAPTER 


1 

They all rose early the next day. Ninian had been out of 
the house before any of them had reached the breakfast 
room, and when he returned, his arms were full of news- 
papers. 

‘‘What^s Walkley say?” said Gilbert. ‘‘That’s all I 
want to know!” 

They opened the Times, and then, when they had read 
the criticism of “The Magic Casement,” they murmured, 
“Charming! Splendid! Oh, ripping!” while Gilbert, sit- 
ting back in his chair, smiled beatifically and said, “Read 
it again, coves. Read it aloud and slowly ! ’ ’ 

While they were reading the notices, Henry went off to 
a post office, and sent his letter to Lady Cecily by express 
messenger. “That’s settled,” he said, as he returned 
home, for he had been afraid that he might change his 
mind. As he was shaving that morning, he had faltered 
in his resolution. “I’d better go,” he had said to himself, 
and then had added weakly, ‘ ‘ No, I ’m damned if I will ! ’ ’ 
Well, it was settled now. The letter was on its way to her. 
She would probably be angry with him, but not as angry 
as he was with her, and perhaps they would not meet again 
for a long while. So much the better. Now he couid get 
on with his book in peace. Gilbert was right. Women do 
upset things. Well, this particular woman would not upset 
him again. . . . 

They had read all the notices when Henry returned, and 
were now at breakfast. Roger was relating the latest legal 
jest about Mr. Justice Kirkcubbin, a poor old man who per- 

329 


CHANGING WINDS 


sisted in clinging to the Bench in spite of the broadest 
hints from the Law Journal, and Ninian was making mys- 
terious movements with his hands. 

‘‘What^s the matter, Ninian?^’ Henry asked, as he sat 
down at the table. 

Ninian, while searching for the notices of Gilbert’s play, 
had seen a sentence in a serial story in one of the news- 
papers. . . . ‘^Her hands fluttered helplessly over his 
breast’^ . . . and he was trying to discover exactly what 
the lady had done with her hands. “She seems to have 
just flopped them about, ’ ’ he said, and he turned to Gilbert. 
“Look here, Gilbert,” he said, “you try it. I’ll clasp you 
in my arms as the hero clasped this female, and you’ll let 
your hands flutter helplessly over my breast ! ’ ’ 

“I’ll let my fist flutter helplessly over your jaw, young 
Ninian! ...” 

“I don’t believe she let her hands do anything of the 
sort,” Ninian went on. “She couldn’t have done it. An 
engineer couldn’t do it, and I don’t believe a female can 
do what an engineer can ’t do ! ” 

‘ ‘ I suppose, ’ ’ he added, getting up from the table, ‘ ‘ Tom 
Arthurs is half way across now. I wish I could have gone 
with him. What a holiday!” 

“Talking of holidays,” Gilbert said, “I’m going to take 
one, and as you don’t seem in a fit state to do any work, 
Quinny, you’d better take one too, and come with me!” 

“Where are you going?” Roger asked. “Anglesey?” 

“No. I thought of going there, but I’ve changed my 
mind. I shall go to Ireland with Quinny.” 

“Ireland!” Henry exclaimed, looking across at Gilbert. 

“Yes. Dublin. We can go to-night. I’ve never been 
there, and I’d like to know what these chaps. Marsh and 
Galway, are up to. That whatdoyoucallit movement you 
were telling me about? . . . you know, the thing that 
means ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ or something of the 
sort!” ^ 

“Oh, the Sinn Fein movement!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


331 


‘^Yes. That^s the thing. The Improved Tories ought 
to know about that. . . 

‘‘That reminds me/’ said Roger, “of an idea I had in 
the middle of the night about the Improved Tories. We 
ought to publish our views on problems. The Fabians do 
that kind of thing rather well. We ought to imitate them. 
We ought to study some subject hard, argue all round it, 
and then tell the world just how we think it ought to be 
solved. I thought we might begin on the problem of un- 
employment. ...” 

“Good Lord, do you think we can solve that!” Ninian 
exclaimed. 

“No, but we might find a means of palliating it. My 
own notion. ...” 

“I thought you had some scheme in your skull, Roger!” 
said Gilbert. “ Let ’s have it ! ” 

“Well, it’s rather raw in my mind at present, but my 
idea is that the way to mitigate the problem of unemploy- 
ment, perhaps solve it, is to join it on to the problem of 
defence. Supposing we decided to create a big army . . . 
and we shall need one sooner or later with all these ententes 
and alliances we’re forming . . . the problem would be to 
form it without dislocating the industrial system. My 
idea is to make it compulsory for every man to undergo 
military training, about a couple of months every year, 
and call the men up to the camp in times of trade depression. 
You wouldn’t have to call them all up at once . . . trades 
aren ’t all slack at the same time . . . and you ’d arrange the 
period of training as far as possible to fit in with the slack 
time in each job. I mean, people who are employed in 
gasworks could easily be trained in the summer without 
dislocating the gas industry . . . colliers, too, and people 
like that . . . and men who are slack in the winter, like 
builders’ men, could be trained in the winter. That’s my 
idea roughly. There ’d be training going on all the year 
round, and of course you could vary the duration of the 
period of training . . . never less than two months, but 


3S2 


CHANGING WINDS 


longer if trade were badly depressed. You’d save a lot 
of misery that way . . . you’d keep your men fit and 
fed and their homes going . . . and you’d have the nucleus 
of a large army. I don’t see why we shouldn’t bring the 
Board of Education in. If we were to raise the school 
age to sixteen, and then make it compulsory for every boy 
to go into a cadet corps or something of the sort for a 
couple of years, you’d relieve the pressure on the labour 
market at that end enormously, and you’d make the job 
of getting the army ready much easier in case of emergency. 
A couple of years’ training to begin with, followed by a 
couple of months’ further training every year, would make 
all the difference in the world to us militarily, and it would 
do away, largely, with the unemployed!” 

‘‘How about apprentices?” said Gilbert. “If you raise 
the school age to sixteen and then make all the boys go 
into training until they are eighteen, you’re going to make 
a big difficulty in the way of getting skilled labour ! ’ ’ 

“I don’t think so. As far as I can make out the period 
of apprenticeship is much too long. Five or six years is a 
ridiculous time to ask a boy to spend in learning his job, 
and any trade unionist will tell you that every apprentice 
spends the first year or two in acting as a sort of messenger : 
fetching beer and cleaning up things. I suppose the real 
reason why the period of indenture is so long is because the 
Unions don’t want to swamp the labour market with 
skilled workers. Well, why shouldn’t we reduce the period 
of apprenticeship by giving the boy a military training? 
You see, don’t you, what a problem this is? I thought of 
talking about it to the Improved Tories, and when we’d 
argued it over a bit, we ’d put our proposals into print and 
circulate them among informed people, and invite them to 
come and tell us what they think of the notion from their 
point of view . . . Trade Union secretaries and military 
men and employers and people like that . . . and then, 
we might publish a book on it. Jaures wrote a book on 
the French Army ... a very good book, too . . . so there 


CHANGING WINDS 


333 


isn’t anything remarkably novel about the notion, except, 
perhaps, my idea of linking the military problem on to 
the unemployment problem. You and Quinny could write 
the book, Gilbert, because you’ve got style and we want 
the book to be written so that people will read it without 
getting tied up. Of course, if you must go to Ireland, 
you must, but it seems a little needless, doesn ’t it ? ” 

“This business will take time,” Gilbert replied. “Tons 
of time. I don’t think our visit to Ireland will affect it 
much. You’ll come with me, won’t you, Quinny?” 

Henry nodded his head. “At once, if you like,” he 
answered, hoping indeed that Gilbert would suggest an im- 
mediate departure. If Lady Cecily were to hear that he 
had left London. . . . 

“To-night will do,” said Gilbert. 

2 

“Are you going to work?” Gilbert said to Henry, when 
the others had gone. 

“I think so,” Henry replied. “I haven’t written a 
word for days. You?” 

“I’ll go and have a squint at the Pall Mall . . . just to 
make sure that last night wasn’t a dream. I’ll come back 
to lunch. It ’ud be rather jolly to go on from Dublin 
and see your father, Quinny?” 

“Yes . . . that’s a notion. I’ll write and tell him we’re 
coming. Bring back the afternoon papers when you come, 
Gilbert, I ’d like to see what they say about the play ! ’ ’ 

“Righto!” said Gilbert. 

Henry sat on in the breakfast room, after Gilbert had 
gone, reading the criticisms of “The Magic Casement,” and 
then, when he had finished, he went up to his room and 
began to work on “Turbulence.” He wrote steadily for 
an hour, and then read over what he had done. 

“This is better,” he murmured to himself, pleased with 
what he had written, and he prepared to go on, but before 


CHANGING WINDS 


aS4! 

he could start again, there was a knock on the door, and 
Magnolia came in. 

“You’re wanted on the telephone, sir!” she said. 

“Who is it?” 

“I don’t know, sir. They didn’t say!” 

He went downstairs and took up the receiver. “Hil- 
loa!” he said. 

“Is that you, Paddy?” was the response. 

“Cecily!” 

“Yes. I’ve just had your letter. Are you very cross, 
Paddy?” 

He felt perturbed, but he tried to make his voice sound 
as if he were indifferent to her. 

“No,” he replied, “I’m not cross at all. ...” 

“Oh, yes, you are, Paddy. You’re very cross, and 
you’re going to teach me a lesson, aren’t you?” 

He could hear her light laugh as she spoke. 

“I can’t make you believe that I’m not cross at all,” 
he said. 

“No, you can’t. Paddy!” Her voice had a coaxing 
note as she said his name. 

“Yes.” 

“Come to lunch with me. Jimphy’s gone off for the day 
somewhere. ...” 

“I’m sorry! . . .” 

“Do come, Paddy. I want you to come. I do, really!” 

He paused for a second or two before he replied. After 
all why should he not go? . . . 

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I really can’t lunch with 
you. I’m going to Ireland! ...” 

‘ ‘ Going where ? ’ ’ 

* ‘ Ireland. To-night ! I ’m going with Gilbert ! ’ ’ 

“But you can’t go this minute. Paddy, you are cross, 
and you’re spiteful, too. If you aren’t cross, you’ll come 
and lunch with me. You ought to come and say ‘good- 
bye’ to me before you go to Ireland. ...” 

“ I ’ve got a lot to do . . . packing and things ! ’ ’ 


CHANGING WINDS 


335 


^‘You can do that afterwards!’’ Her voice became more 
insistent. “Paddy, I want yon to come. You must 
come 1 . . . ” 

He hesitated, and she said, “Do, Paddy!” very appeal- 
ingly. 

It would be weak, he told himself, to yield to her now 
. . . she would think she had only to be a little gracious 
and he would be at her feet immediately; and then he 
thought it would be weak not to yield to her. “It’ll look 
as if I were afraid to meet her . . . running away like this. 
Or that I ’m sulking . . . just petulant ! ’ ’ 

“All right,” he said to her, “I’ll come!” 

“Come now!” 

He nodded his head, forgetting that she could not see 
him, and she called to him again, “You’ll come now, won’t 
you ? ’ ’ 

“ Yes, ” he replied. “ I ’ll come at once ! ’ ’ 

He put up the receiver and reached for his hat. “I 
wonder what she wants, ’ ’ he thought. ^ ‘ Perhaps she really 
does love me and my letter ’s frightened her ! ’ ’ His spirits 
rose at the thought and he went jauntily to the door and 
opened it, and as he did so, Ninian, pale and miserable, 
panted up the steps. 

“My God, Quinny!” he exclaimed, almost sobbing, “the 
Gigantic ’s gone down ! ” 

“The what?” 

“The Gigantic’s gone down! It’s in the paper. Look, 
look!” He was unbalanced by grief as he thrust the 
Westminster Gazette and the Globe into Henry’s hands. 

“But, damn it, she can’t have gone down,” Henry said, 
“she’s a Belfast boat . . . she can’t have gone down!” 

‘ ‘ She has, I tell you, and Tom Arthurs ... oh, my God, 
Quinny, he ’s gone down too ! The decentest chap on earth 
and . . . and he’s been drowned!” 

Henry led him into the house. “I went out to get the 
evening papers to see about Gilbert’s play,” he went on, 
“and that’s what I saw. I saw her at Southampton going 


336 


CHANGING WINDS 


off as proud as a queen . . . and now she’s at the bottom 
of the Atlantic. And Tom waved his hand to me. He was 
going to show me over her properly when he came back. 
Isn’t it horrible, Quinny? What’s the sense of it . . . 
what the hell’s the sense of it?” 

“She can’t have gone down ...” Henry said, as if that 
would comfort Ninian. 

“She has, I tell you. ...” 

Henry went to the sideboard and took out the whisky. 

“Here, Ninian,” he said, pouring out some of it, “drink 
that. You’re upset! ...” 

“No, I don’t want any whisky. God damn it, what’s 
the sense of a thing like this ! A man like Tom 
Arthurs! ...” 

There was a noise like the sound of a taxi-cab drawing 
up in front of the house, and presently the bell rang, and 
then, after a moment or two, the door opened, and Mrs. 
Graham came hurrying into the room. 

“Ninian! Where’s Ninian?” she said wildly to Henry. 

“He’s here, Mrs. Graham!” 

She went to him and clutched him tightly to her. “Oh, 
my dear, my dear,” she said. 

“What is it, mother?” he asked, calming himself and 
looking at her. 

“I telephoned to your office’, but you weren’t there, 
so I came here to find you. I couldn’t rest content till I’d 
seen you!” 

“What is it, mother?” 

“That ship, Ninian. If you’d been on it . . . you 
wanted to go, and I said why didn’t you ... oh, my dear, 
if you’d been on it, and I’d lost you!” 

He put his arms about her and drew her on to his 
shoulder. “I’m all right, mother!” he said. 

Henry left the room hurriedly. He went to the kitchen 
and called to Mrs. Clutters. “I won’t be in to lunch,” he 
said. “Don’t let any one disturb Mrs. Graham and Mr. 
Graham for a while. They . . . they’ve had bad news!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


337 


Then he went out of the house. The taxi-cab in which 
Mrs. Graham had come was still standing outside the door. 
“I ain’t ’ad me fare yet,” said the driver. 

‘‘All right!” said Henry. “I’ll pay it.” 

He gave Cecily’s address to the man, and then he got 
into the cab. 


3 

He could hear the newspaper boys crying out the news 
of the disaster as he was driven swiftly to Cecily’s house. 
The sinking of the great ship had stunned men’s minds and 
humiliated their prMe. This beautiful vessel, skilfully 
built, the greatest ship afloat, had seemed imperishable, the 
most powerful weapon that man had yet forged to subdue 
the sea, and in a little while, recoiling from the hidden ice- 
berg, she had foundered, broken as easily as a child’s toy, 
carrying all her vanity and strength to the bottom. . . . 

“It isn’t true,” he kept on saying to himself as if he 
were trying to contradict the cries of the newsvendors. 
“She’s a Belfast boat and Belfast boats don’t go 
down. ...” 

He felt it oddly, this loss. The drowning of many men 
and women and children affected him merely as a vague, 
impersonal thing. “Yes, it ’s dreadful, ’ ’ he would say when 
he thought of it, but he was not moved by it. When he 
remembered Tom Arthurs he was stirred, but less than 
Ninian had been. He could see him now, just as he had 
stood in the shipyard that day when John Marsh and 
Henry had been vdth him, and he had watched the work- 
men pouring through the gates. “Those are my pals!” 
he had said. . . . Poor Tom Arthurs ! Destroyed with the 
thing that he had! conceived and his “pals” had built ! But 
perhaps that was as he would have wished. It would have 
hurt Tom Arthurs to have lived on after the Gigantic had 
gone down. ... It was not the drowning of a crowd of 
people or the drowning of Tom Arthurs that most affected 


338 


CHANGING WINDS 


Henry. It was the fact that a boat built by Belfast men 
had foundered on her maiden trip, on a clear, cold night 
of stars, reeling from the iceberg’s blow like a flimsy 
yacht. He had the Ulsterman’s pride in the Ulsterman’s 
power, and he liked to boast that the best ships in the 
world were built on the Lagan. . . . 

“By God,” he said to himself, “this’ll break their hearts 
in Belfast!” 

The cab drew up before the door of Cecily’s house, and 
in a little while he was with her. 

“Have you heard about the Gigantic?’^ he said, as he 
walked across the room to her. 

‘ ‘ Oh, yes, ’ ’ she answered, ‘ ‘ isn ’t it dreadful ? Come and 
sit down here 1 ’ ’ 

He had not greeted her otherwise than by his question 
about the Gigantic, and she frowned a little as she made 
'room for him beside her on the sofa. 

“That great boat! . . .” he began, but she interrupted 
him. 

“I suppose you’re still cross,” she said. 

‘ ‘ Cross ? ’ ’ 

“Yes. You haven’t even shaken hands with me!” 

He remembered now. “Oh!” he said in confusion, but 
could say no more. 

“Are you really going to Ireland?” she asked, putting 
her hand on his arm. 

“Yes,” he answered, feeling his resolution weakening 
just because she had touched him. 

“But why?” 

“You know why!” he said. 

Her hand dropped from his arm. “I don’t know why,” 
she exclaimed pettishly, and he saw and disliked the way 
her lips turned downwards as she said it. 

“I can’t bear it, Cecily,” he exclaimed. “I must have 
you to myself or ... or not have you at all ! ” 

“Perfectly absurd!” she murmured. 

“It isn’t absurd. How can you expect me to feel happy 


CHANGING WINDS 


339 


when I see you going off with Jimphy? Can't you under- 
stand, Cecily? Here I am with you now, but if Jimphy 
were to come into the room, I should have to ... to give 
way, to pretend that I 'm not in love with you ! ’ ’ 

^‘I can’t see what difference it makes,” she said. 
^‘Jimphy and I don’t interfere with each other. It’s ridic- 
ulous to make all this fuss. I don’t see any necessity to 
go about telling everybody! ...” 

‘‘I didn’t propose that,” he interrupted. 

Yes, you did, Paddy, dear 1 You asked me to run aw.ay 
with you, and what’s that but telling everybody?” 

He felt angry with her for what seemed to him to be 
flippancy. ‘‘I’m in earnest, Cecily!” he said. “I’m not 
joking!” 

“I’m in earnest, too. I don’t want to run away with 
you . . . not because I don’t love you ... I do love you, 
Paddy, very much . . . but it’s so absurd to run away 
and make a ... a mountain out of a molehill. We should 
be awfully miserable if we were to elope. We’d have to 
go to some horrid place where we shouldn’t know anybody 
and there ’d be nothing to do. Keally, it’s much pleasanter 
to go on as we are now, Paddy. You can come here and 
take me to lunch sometimes and go to the theatre with me 
when Jimphy wants to go to a music-hall, and . . . and 
so on!” 

He could not rid himself of the notion that she was 
“chattering” in the Lensley style. 

‘ ‘ It would be decenter to go away together, ’ ’ he said. 

She moved away from him angrily. “You’re a prig, 
Paddy !” she exclaimed. “You can go to Ireland. I don’t 
care!” 

He got up as if to go, but did not move away. He stood 
beside her irresolutely, wishing to go and wishing to stay, 
and then he bent over her and touched her. ‘ ‘ Cecily, ’ ’ he 
said, ‘ ‘ come with me ! ” 

“No!” she answered, keeping her back to him. 

“Very well,” he said, and he walked across the room 


340 


CHANGING WINDS 


towards the door. His hand was on the handle when she 
called to him. 

“Aren’t you going to stay to lunch?” she said. 

“You told me to go! . . 

“Yes, but I didn’t mean immediately. I shall be all 
alone. ’ ’ 

He went back to her very quickly, and sat down beside 
her and folded her in his arms. 

“I loathe you,” he cried, with his lips pressed against 
her cheek. “I loathe you because you’re so selfish and 
brutal. You don’t really care for me. ...” 

“Oh, I do, Paddy! . . .” 

“No, you don’t. You were making love to Ninian last 
night! ...” 

“ So that’s it, is it? . . .” 

“No, it isn’t. Ninian doesn’t care about you or 
about any woman. He’s not like me, a soft, sloppy fool. 
You don’t love me. If I were to leave you now, you’d find 
some one to take my place quite easily. Lensley or 
Boltt! . . .” 

“They’re too middle-aged, Paddy!” 

He pushed her away from him. “Damn it, can’t you be 
serious ! ” he shouted at her. 

“You’re very rude,” she replied. 

“I’d like to beat you! I’d like to hurt you! ...” 

She smiled at him and then she put her arms about his 
neck and drew him towards her. “You don’t loathe me, 
Paddy,” she said softly, soothing him with her voice, “you 
love me, don’t you?” 

“Will you come away with me? Now?” 

“No!” She kissed him and got up. “Let’s go to 
lunch,” she said. 

He felt that he ought to leave her then, but he followed 
her meekly enough. 

“I don’t think I’ll stay to lunch,” he said weakly. 

“Yes, you will!” she replied. “You can take me to a 
picture gallery afterwards! ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


341 


4 

They did not go to a picture gallery. The spring air 
was so fresh that she declared she must go for a drive. 

‘‘Let’s go to Hampstead!” he said, signalling to a taxi- 
driver. “We’ll have tea at Jack Straw’s Castle!” 

“Yes, let’s!” she exclaimed. 

She had tried to persuade him not to return to Ireland, 
but he had insisted that he must go because of his promise 
to Gilbert. 

“Do you care for Gilbert more than you care for me?” 
she had asked, making him wonder at the casual way in 
which she spoke Gilbert’s name. It seemed incredible, lis- 
tening to her, that Gilbert had been her lover. . . . 

“ It ’s hardly the same thing, ’ ’ he replied. 

Then, after more pleading and anger, she had given in. 
“Very well,” she said, “I won’t ask you again, and don’t 
let’s talk about it any more. We’ll enjoy to-day anyhow !” 

The taxi-cab carried them swiftly to Hampstead. 

“We’ll get out at the Spaniards’ Koad,” he said, “and 
walk across the Heath. It’s beautiful now!” 

“All right,” she answered. 

They did as he said, and walked about the Heath for 
nearly an hour. The fresh smell of spring exhilarated 
them, and they sat for a little while on a seat which w£is 
perched on rising ground so that they were able to see 
far beyond the common. Young bracken fronds were 
thrusting their curled heads upwards through the old brown 
growth ; and the buds on the blackened boughs were burst- 
ing from their cases and offering delicate green leaves to 
the sunlight ; and the yellow whins shone like little golden 
stars on their spiky stems. Henry’s capacity for sensuous 
enjoyment was fully employed, and he would willingly have 
sat there until dusk, drawing his breath in with as much 
luxurious feeling as a woman has when she puts new linen 
on. her limbs. He would have liked to strip and bathe his 
naked body in the Highgate Ponds or run with bare feet 


CHANGING WINDS 


34a 

over the wet grass . . . but Cecily was tired of the Heath. 

“Isn’t it time we got some tea?” she said, getting up 
and looking about her as if she were searching for a 
teashop. 

“I suppose it is,” he answered reluctantly, and he rose 
too. “We go this way,” he said, moving in the direction 
of Jack Straw’s Castle. “Let’s come back to the Heath,” 
he added, “after we’ve had tea!” 

“But why?” she asked. 

“Oh, because it’s so beautiful.” 

“I thought it was getting chilly,” she objected. 

5 

“I don’t see why you want to go to Ireland,” she ex- 
claimed, as she handed a cup of tea to him. 

“I’ve told you why,” he said. 

“Oh, but that isn’t a reason. And why does Gilbert 
want to go? He isn’t Irish.” 

“I suppose! . . .” 

“It’s so absurd to go rushing about like this. I should 
have thought Gilbert would want to stay in town now that 
his play is on. Is it a success? I haven’t looked at the 
papers, but then I never do. I can’t read newspapers . . . 
they’re so dull. This tea is nice. And it’s much nicer in 
town now than it can possibly be in Ireland. Besides, I 
don’t want you to go!” 

He let her chatter on, hoping that she would exhaust 
her interest in his visit to Ireland and begin to talk of 
something else, but he did not know that Cecily had greater 
tenacity than might appear from the incoherence of her 
conversation. She held on to a subject until it was set- 
tled irrevocably. She looked very charming as she sat 
opposite to him, and he wondered how Jimphy could be 
so careless of her loveliness. The sunlight shining through 
the window above her head kindled her hair so that the 


CHANGING WINDS 


343 


ripples of it shone like gold, and the delicate sunburnt 
flush of her cheeks deepened in the soft glow. He put out 
his hand and touched her fingers. ‘‘Beautiful Cecily!’^ he 
said, and she smiled because she liked to be told how 
beautiful she was. 

“But youVe going to Ireland,’^ she said. 

He did not answer. 

“You say you’d do anything for me,” she proceeded, 
“but when I ask you not to go to Ireland, you refuse. If 
you really love me! . . .” 

“I do love you, Cecily!” 

“Well, why don’t you stay in town? It’s so queer to 
go away the moment you get to know me ! ” She began to 
laugh. 

“What’s the joke?” he asked. 

“Oh, I’ve just remembered how little we know of each 
other. You kissed me the first time you came to my 
house !” 

“I loved you the moment I saw you . . . that day in 
the Park when I was with Gilbert ... I loved you then. 
I didn’t know who you were, but I loved you. I couldn’t 
help it, Cecily. You were looking at Gilbert and then your 
eyes shifted and you looked at me, and I loved you, dear. 
I worried Gilbert to tell me about you! ...” 

“What did he say?” she interrupted eagerly, leaning 
her elbows on the table and resting her chin in the cup 
of her hands. 

“He told me who you were,” Henry answered awk- 
wardly. 

“But didn’t he say anything else? . . . didn’t he? . . .” 

“I’ve forgotten what he said. . . . Then I saw you at 
the St. James’s ... he told me you often went to first- 
nights, and I went specially, hoping to see you! ...” 

“Dear Paddy,” she said, “and you were so shy!” 

“And so jealous and angry because you talked all the 
time tv> Gilbert, and ignored me. You made me go out of 


34)4 


CHANGING WINDS 


the box with Jimphy, and as I went, I saw you putting your 
hand out to touch Gilbert, and I heard you calling him, 
‘Gilbert, darling.’ ...” 

She laughed, but did not speak. 

“And I was frightfully jealous. Gilbert’s my best 
friend, Cecily, but I hated him that night. I suppose . . . 
oh, I don ’t Imow ! ’ ’ 

“What were you going to say?” she asked. 

He looked at her intently for a few moments. Her grey 
eyes were full of laughter, and he wondered whether she 
would answer his question seriously. 

“Well?” she said. 

“Do you still love Gilbert, Cecily? Am I . . . just 
some one to fill in the time . . . until Gilbert ! . . . ” 

She sat back in her seat, and the laughter left her eyes. 

“Let’s go!” she said. 

But he did not move. “You do love him,” he persisted, 
“and you don’t love me. ...” 

“Are you going to Ireland with him?” she demanded. 

“Yes!” 

“Very well, then!” The tightened tone of her voice 
indicated that there was no more to be said, but he would 
not heed the warning, and persisted in demanding ex- 
planations. 

“If you go to Ireland with Gilbert,” she said, “I’ll 
never speak to you again ! ’ ’ 

She closed her lips firmly, and he saw the downward 
curve of them again, and while he pondered on what she 
had said, the thought shot across his mind that that down- 
ward curve would deepen as she grew older. “She’ll get 
very bad-tempered ! ...” 

“I mean it,” she said, interrupting his thought and 
compelling him to pay heed to her. “I’ll never speak to 
you again if you go away now.” 

“But I’ve promised, Cecily!” he protested. 

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t see what Chat’s 
got to do with it,” she answered. 


CHANGING WINDS 


345 


6 

They came out of the inn, and stood for a few moments 
before the door. 

“Shall we go back to the Heath?” he said. 

“No,” she replied. “Let’s go home.” 

“Very well!” 

He felt broken and crushed and tongueless. Cecily did 
not speak to him as they walked towards the Spaniards’ 
Road, nor did he speak to her. The angry look on her face 
deterred him. 

He hailed a taxi, and they got into it and were driven 
down Fitzjohn’s Avenue and homewards. Once she turned 
to him and said again, “Are you going to Ireland with 
him?” but when he answered, “I must, Cecily, I said I 
would!” she turned away again and did not speak until 
the taxi drew up before her door. 

“Perhaps you’d rather I didn’t come in?” he said, ex- 
pecting that she would dismiss him, but she did not do so. 

“Jimphy may be at home,” she said, “and probably 
he’d like to see you!” 

“I thought he’d gone away for the day!” 

“He may have returned.” 

She went up the steps of the house while he paid the 
driver of the taxi-cab, and spoke to the servant who had 
opened the door. 

“He’s not in,” she said to Henry when he joined her. 

“Then I won’t ...” 

“Come in,” she interrupted. “I want to say something 
to you!” 

He followed her into the hall and up the stairs to the 
drawing-room, where she left him while she went to her 
room to take off her outdoor garments. He moved aim- 
lessly about until she returned. She had changed her 
clothes, and was wearing a loose golden silk teagown with 
a girdle round it, and the gold in her hair seemed to be 
enriched by the gold in her dress. She went up to him 


346 CHANGING WINDS 

quickly, putting her hands on his shoulders and drawing 
him close to her. 

“Paddy she said, and her voice was very tense. 

“Yes?” he answered. 

“IVe never asked you to do anything for me, have I?” 
She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. He tried 
to answer her, but could not because her lips were tightly 
pressed on his. 

“You won^t go, will you?” she murmured, closing her 
eyes and tightening her hold on him. 

He struggled a little. . . . “Why don’t you want me to 
go with Gilbert?” he said. 

But she did not answer his question. She drew him 
back to her again, whispering, “I love you, Paddy, I love 
you. I don’t love any one else but you!” 

He threw his arms about her, and they stood there for- 
getful of everything. . . . 

She moved a little, and he led her to the sofa where they 
sat down together. She laid her head on his shoulder, and 
he put his arms around her and drew her warm, yielding 
body close to his. He could feel the beating of her 
heart. . . . 

“You won’t go, will you, Paddy?” she whispered. 

“No,” he answered, bending over her and kissing her. 

She drew herself closer to him. “Dear Paddy!” she 
said. 


7 

He went up to Gilbert’s room immediately after he re- 
turned home. All the way back from Lady Cecily’s, he had 
told himself that he must tell Gilbert at once that he was 
not going to Ireland because he was in love with Cecily 
‘ ‘ and because she ’s in love with me ! ” and he had repeated 
his resolution many times to himself in the hope that by 
thinking exclusively of it, there would be no opportunity 
for other thoughts to come into his head. He shrank from 


CHANGING WINDS 


347 


the meeting with Gilbert, for his conscience hurt him be- 
cause of his betrayal of Gilbert’s love and friendship. He 
had palliated his conduct by saying to himself that Gilbert 
had given Cecily up, but the excuse would not serve to ab- 
solve him from the sense of unfriendly behaviour. 

“I’m making excuses for myself,” he murmured. 
“That’s all I’m doing. The decent thing is to go to Gil- 
bert and tell him everything ... or ... or I could write 
it. I could write a long letter to him and get Magnolia 
to give it to him. . . . Perhaps that ’ud be better than 
telling him. It’ll be difficult to get a chance to say any- 
thing to him with Roger and Ninian about. ...” 

He broke off his thoughts and spoke out loud. “You’re 
funking it,” he said. “Damn you, you’re funking it!” 

“I must tell him myself,” he went on. “I must stand 
up to some one. I can’t go on funking things for- 
ever. . . .” 

It was odd, he thought, that he had no feeling for Jim- 
phy. He had not any sense of shame because he had made 
love to Jimphy’s wife. Jimphy appeared to him only in a 
comic light. Yet Jimphy had professed friendship for 
him. “Of course,” he said, “they don’t love each other!” 
but in this mood of self-confession which held him, he ad- 
mitted that he would have felt no contrition even if Jimphy 
had been devoted to Cecily. 

“ He ’s a born cuckold ! ” he went on. “I might be afraid 
to take his wife from him, but I wouldn’t be ashamed to do 
it. No one would. ...” 

He had opened the door and gone quickly up the stairs, 
hoping that he would not meet any of the others. Gilbert 
would probably be in his study or in his bedroom, and so 
he could talk to him at once and get the thing over. He 
knocked on the study door, and then, receiving no answer, 
opened it and looked in. Gilbert was not there. He went 
to the bedroom and called “Are you in, Gilbert?” but there 
was no response. “I suppose he’s downstairs,” he said 
to himself, and he walked part of the way down to 


348 


CHANGING WINDS 


the dining-room, stopping midway when he saw Magnolia. 

‘ ‘ Tell Mr. Farlow I want to speak to him, ^ ^ he" called to 
her. “Up in my study!’’ 

He went to his room, and stood staring out of the win- 
dow until Gilbert came. 

“Hilloa, Quinny, what’s up?” Gilbert said, as he en- 
tered the study. 

Henry turned to him. He could feel the pallor of his 
cheeks, so nervous was he. 

‘ ‘ Gilbert, ’ ’ he said desperately, ‘ ‘ I want to talk to you ! ’ ’ 

“Yes? . . .” 

“I’m not going to Ireland with you ! ’ ’ 

“Not going! . . . Why?” 

He moved mechanically towards Gilbert and stopped at 
the table where he wrote. He stood for a few moments, 
fingering things, turning over pieces of foolscap and tap- 
ping the table with a paper knife. 

“What is it, Quinny?” Gilbert said again, and as he 
spoke, he came up to Henry and touched him. “ Is it . . . 
is it anything about Cecily?” Henry nodded his head. 
“I thought so,” Gilbert continued. He moved away and 
sat down. “Well, tell me about it,” he said. 

“I’m in love with her, Glibert!” 

“Yes.” 

“ I ... I asked her to run away with me ! . . . ” 

Gilbert laughed. “You have hustled, Quinny,” he said. 
“And she wouldn’t, eh?” 

“No!” Gilbert’s laughter stimulated him, and he spoke 
more fiuently. “But she’s in love with me. She told me 
so. I’ve just come from her. And she wants me to stay 
in town.” 

“To be near her?” 

“Yes. Yes, I suppose so. I had to tell you. I felt that 
I must tell you. Gilbert, I’m ashamed, but I can’t help it. 
I love her so much that I’d . . . I’d do anything for her.’^ 

Gilbert did not move nor did he speak. He sat in his 
chair, looking very intently at Henry. 


CHANGING WINDS 


349 


‘‘I can’t understand myself,” Henry went on. ‘‘My 
feelings are hopelessly mixed up. I want to do decent 
things and I loathe cads, but all the same I do caddish 
things myself. I want to be straight, but I’m not straight. 
... It’s awfully hard to explain what I mean, but there’s 
something in me that seems to keep pulling me out of line, 
and I haven’t enough force in me to beat it. I suppose it’s 
the mill in my blood. My grandfather was a mill-owner.” 

Gilbert shook his head and smiled. “I don’t think your 
notions of heredity are sound, Quinny. Is that all you 
have to confess?” 

“All?” 

“Yes. There isn’t anything else?” 

“No. I wanted to tell you that I’m ashamed, but I must 
tell you, too, that although I’m ashamed, I shan’t stop lov- 
ing Cecily. I can’t. ...” 

Gilbert got up and went over to him. He sat on the 
edge of the table so that Henry, when he looked up, had to 
gaze straight at him. 

“You’re a rum bloke, Quinny,” he said. “I’m always 
telling you that, aren ’t I ? But you were never so rum as 
you are now. It’s no good pretending that I don’t feel 
. . . feel anything about Cecily. I do. But I’ve known 
about you and her for some while. I knew you’d fall in 
love with her that day in the Park when you were excited 
about her beauty and were so anxious that I should intro- 
duce you to her. Of course, I knew you’d fall in love with 
her. I’m not a dramatist for nothing. So what you say 
isn’t news. I mean, it doesn’t surprise me. Quinny, I’m 
awfully fond of you, old chap, much more than I am of 
Ninian or Roger. I expect it’s because you’re such a 
blooming baby. I’m not really upset about your being in 
love with Cecily. That had to be. But I ’m awfully upset 
about you!” 

“Me, Gilbert?” Henry said, looking up in astonishment. 

“Yes. You haven’t got much resolution, have you? 
Cecily has only got to blub a little or kiss you a few times, 


350 


CHANGING WINDS 


and you^re done for . . . she can do what she likes with 
yon. You haven ^t got the courage to run away from her, 
and you haven ’t the power to stand up to her and say ‘ Be- 
damned to you’!’’ 

“No, I know that!” 

“So, I think I’ll just kidnap you, Quinny. I think I’ll 
make you come to Ireland with me. ...” 

“You can’t do that, Gilbert!” 

“Can’t I, by God!” Gilbert’s voice had changed from 
its bantering note to a note of resolve. “Do you think 
I ’m going to let my best friend make an ass of himself, and 
do nothing to prevent him? Quinny, you’re an ass! 
You’re too fond of running about saying you can’t help 
this and you can’t help that . . . and spilling over! And 
what do you think’s going to be the end of this business? 
I suppose you imagine that Cecily ’ll change her mind some 
day, and run away with you? Do you think she’ll run 
away with you when she wouldn’t run away with me? 
Damn you, you’ve got a nerve to think a thing like 
that. . . 

“I don’t think that, Gilbert,” Henry interjected. 

“Oh, yes, you do! Of course, you do! That’s natural 
enough. I wouldn’t mind so much if I thought there were 
a chance that she would run away with you, but she 
won’t!” 

“You wouldn’t mind! . . .” 

“No. Why should I? If she won’t run away with me, 
she couldn’t do better than run away with you. And 
there ’d be a chance then that you’d get on with your job. 
You’d soon shake down into some sort of balance if you 
were together, but you’ll never get level if you go on in 
the way you’re going now. You’ll run up into one emo- 
tional crisis and down into another, and you’ll spend the 
time between them in ... in recovering. That’s all. 
And your work will go to blazes. I know, Quinny. You 
see, I was your predecessor. ...” 

“But Cecily’s proud of my work. . . .” 


CHANGING WINDS 


351 


^^She was proud of mine. So she said. Look here, 
Quinny, buck up! How much of your new novel have you 
written since you knew her ? ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Not very much, of course, but !...’' 

‘^Exactly. I couldn’t work either when . . . when I 
was your predecessor. Cecily’s greedy, Quinny! She 
wants all of you . . . and she has the power to make you 
give the whole of yourself to her. If you think that ‘all 
for love and the world well lost’ is the right motto for a 
man . . . then Cecily ’s your woman. But is it ? Hang it 
all, Quinny, you haven’t done your work yet . . . you’ve 
only begun to do it!” 

He got off the table and began to search among Henry’s 
papers. 

“What are you looking for?” Henry asked. 

‘ ‘ I want the manuscript of ‘ Turbulence. ’ Where is it ? ” 

“I’ll get it. What do you want it for?” 

He opened a drawer and took out the few sheets of the 
novel that were written. 

“Is that all?” said Gilbert. 

“Yes,” Henry answered. 

“Cecily doesn’t seem to inspire you, Quinny, does she, 
any more than she inspired me? You haven’t written a 
whole chapter yet. ... Do you remember what we swore 
at Kumpell’s?” 

“We swore a whole lot of things! ...” 

“Yes, but the most important thing? We swore we’d 
become Great. I don’t know that any of us ever will be 
Great. ... I get the sensation now and then that we’re 
frightfully crude, even Roger, but we can become some- 
thing better than one of Cecily’s lovers, can’t we?” 

“I don’t know that I want to be anything else. ...” 

“For shame, Quinny!” 

Gilbert put the manuscript back into the drawer from 
which Henry had taken it. 

“You’ll come to Ireland with me?” he said. 

“No, Gilbert, I won’t!” 


352 


CHANGING WINDS 


“You will. I’ll break your jaw if you don’t come. I’ll 
knock the stuffing out of you if you don’t come. We can 
catch the night train and be in Dublin to-morrow morn- 
ing! ...” 

“I promised Cecily I wouldn’t go. . . .” 

“And you promised me you would go. I’ve packed all 
the things I want, and it oughtn’t to take you long to pack 
a trunk. I’ll come and help you after dinner . . . there’s 
the gong . . . we’ll just have time if you hop round 
quickly. Ninian can telephone for a taxi to take us to 
Euston ! ’ ’ 

“It’s no good, Gilbert. ...” 

“Come on. I can smell onions, and I’d risk my im- 
mortal soul for onions. Boiled, fried, stewed or roasted, 
Quinny, there ’s no vegetable to beat them. ...” 


8 

“I’m not going, Gilbert! ...” 

“You are going!” 

They had finished dinner and were now in Henry’s bed- 
room. Gilbert had instructed Ninian to telephone for a 
taxi. Then, shoving Henry before him, he had climbed the 
stairs to Henry’s room and started to pack his trunk. 

“You can’t make me go! . . .” 

Gilbert took an armful of shirts from the chest of draw- 
ers and dropped them into the trunk. “Once, when I was 
wandering in Walworth,” he said, “I heard a coster- 
monger threatening to give another costermonger a thick 
ear, a bunged-up eye and a mouth full of blood. That’s 
what you’ll get if you don’t hop round. What suits do 
you want?” 

Henry did not answer. He walked to the window and 
stood there, peering out at the trees in the garden. A 
taxi-cab drove up to the door and presently Ninian came 
bounding up the stairs to tell them of its arrival. 


CHANGING WINDS 


353 


^‘Tell him to wait,’’ said Gilbert, and Ninian hurried 
back to do so. “If you won’t choose your suits yourself,” 
he went on to Henry, “I shall have to do it for you. 
Socks, socks, where the hell do you keep your socks? . . 

It seemed to Henry that he could see Cecily’s face shin- 
ing out of the darkness. He could feel her arms about him 
and hear her beautiful voice telling him that she loved him. 
“I won’t go,” he said to himself. “I won’t go! . . 

“If you’d only help to pack, we’d save heaps of money,” 
Gilbert grumbled. “It’s sickening to think of that taxi 
sitting out there totting up tuppences. Come and sit on 
the lid of this trunk, will you?” 

Henry did not move from the window. Gilbert straight- 
ened himself. For a moment or two he could not see 
clearly because he was giddy with stooping. Then he 
crossed the room and took hold of Henry’s arm. 

“Come on, Quinny,” he said, pulling him towards the 
trunk. 

“What’s the good of fussing like this, Gilbert, when I’ve 
told you I won’t go. . . .” 

“Well, sit on the trunk anyhow. I may as well close 
the thing now I’ve filled it. . . .” 


9 

He called Ninian, and between them they carried the 
luggage downstairs to the cab. 

“Now then, Quinny!” said Gilbert. 

“I’m not going, I tell you. ...” 

‘ ‘ Get into the cab, damn you. Go on ! ” 

He shoved him forward so that he almost fell against the 
step of the taxi, and Ninian caught hold of him, and they 
lifted him and heaved him into the taxi. 

“Get in, Ninian,” said Gilbert. He turned and shouted 
up the hall to Roger. “Come on, Roger! You’d better 
come and see us off!” 


354 


CHANGING WINDS 


None of them spoke during the short drive to Euston. 
Henry sulked in a comer of the cab, ^telling himself that 
it was monstrous of Gilbert to treat him in this fashion, 
and vowing that nothing would induce him to get into the 
train . . . and then, his mind veering again, telling him- 
self that perhaps it would be a good thing to go to Ireland 
for a while. Cecily had chopped and changed with him. 
Why should he not chop and change with her ? . . . Neither 
Ninian nor Koger made any remark on the peculiarity of the 
journey to Ireland. They had known in the morning that 
Gilbert and Henry were going away that night, but it was 
clear that something had happened since then, that Gilbert 
was more intent on the journey than Henry. ... No 
doubt, they would know in good time. Probably, Ninian 
thought to himself, that woman Jayne is mixed up in 
it. . . . 

“You get the tickets, Ninian,’’ Gilbert said when they 
reached Euston. “Firsts. Democracy’s all right in the- 
ory, but I don’t like it in a railway carriage!” 

“Where’s the money?” said Ninian. 

“Money! What do you want money for? All right! 
Here you are! You can pay me afterwards, Quinny!” 

They had only a few minutes in which to get into the 
train, and Gilbert, putting his arm in Henry’s and hurry- 
ing him towards the Irish mail,' was glad that the wait 
would not be long. 

“It’s ridiculous to behave like this,” said Henry, as 
they shoved him into a carriage. 

“I know it is,” Gilbert answered. He turned to Roger. 
“We may want grub during the night. Get some, will 
you ! Sandwiches will do and hard-boiled eggs, if you can 
get ’em. ...” 

He turned to Henry. “You’re my friend, Quinny,” 
he said, “I can’t let you make a mucker of everything, can 
I?” 

Henry did not answer. 

“I know exactly how you feel,” Gilbert went on. “I 


CHANGING WINDS 


S55 


should feel like it myself if I were in your place, but if I 
were, Quinny, I’d be damned glad if you’d do the same for 


me!’ 


10 

“Good Lord!” Gilbert exclaimed, as the train drove out 
of London, “I forgot to pack your toothpaste. ...” 


Vi 




THE THIED BOOK 

OF 

CHANGING WINDS 


. . . quitted all to save 
A world from utter loss. 


Paradise Lost. 


THE FIRST CHAPTER 


1 

As the boat turned round the end of the pier and moved 
! up the harbour to her berth, Gilbert, eyeing the passengers, 
caught eight of Henry and instantly hallooed to him. The 
passage from Kingstown had been smooth, and Henry, 
heartened by the sea air and sunshine, pressed eagerly 
through the throng of passengers so that he might be near 
j the gangway and so be among the first to descend from the 
steamer. He called a greeting to Gilbert, and then, the 
I boat being berthed, hurried forward to the gangway. He 
j: could not get off the steamer as quickly as he wished for 
the number of passengers on board was very large, and he 
fidgeted impatiently until he was able to get ashore. 

‘‘We’ll send this bag on by the waggonette,” Gilbert 
said, when they had shaken hands and congratulated each 
i other on their healthy looks, “and walk over to Tre’Arrdur, 
and we’ll gabble on the way. Here,” he added, taking a 
letter out of his breastpocket, “you can read that while I 
find the man. It’s from Ninian. It came this morn- 
ing! ...” 

He seized Henry’s bag and hurried off with it, leaving 
Henry to follow slowly or remain where he was, as he 
pleased, and then, before Henry had time to do more than 
: take the letter from its envelope and glance carelessly at 
! the first page of it, he came quickly back. “Come up,” he 
i said, putting his arm in Henry’s. “You can read it as 
! you go along. There’s not much in it!” 

They left the pier and passed through the station into 
• the street. 

“Holyhead,” said Gilbert, “is a good place to get drunk 

I in! We won’t linger! . . .” 

359 


360 


CHANGING WINDS 


They took the lower road to Tre’Arrdur Bay because 
it was quieter than the upper road, and as they walked, 
Henry read Ninian’s letter. 

“He seems to like South America,^’ he said, returning 
the letter to Gilbert when he had finished with it. 

Gilbert nodded his head. “That old Tunnel of his 
doesn’t get itself built, does it? But it must be great fun 
building a railway in a place like that. There’s a revolu- 
tion on the first and third Tuesdays of the month, and the 
President of the Republic and the Emperor of the Empire 
are in power for a fortnight and in exile for another one. 
So Ninian says. He told Roger in his last letter that he 
had had to kick the emperor’s backside for him for inter- 
fering with the railway contract. . . . Oh, by the bye, 
Rachel’s produced an infant. She says it’s like Roger, 
but Roger hopes not. He says it’s like nothing on earth. 
He came to see me off from Euston yesterday and when I 
asked him to describe it to me, he said he couldn’t ... it 
was indescribable. It looks raw, he says. It must be 
frightfully comic to be a father, Quinny!” 

“I don’t see anything comic about it,” Henry replied. 
“I’d rather like to be a father myself.” 

“Well, why don’t you become one. They say it’s easy 
enough. First, you get a wife. ...” 

“What sort of an infant is it? Is it a boy or a girl?” 

“Great Scott!” said Gilbert, “I forgot to ask that. 
That was very careless of me. Look out, Quinny, here’s a 
motor, and that’s Holy Mountain on the right. We’ll go 
up it to-morrow, if you like. It’s not much of a climb. 
Just enough to jig you up a bit. There’s a chap in the 
hotel who scoots up mountains like a young goat. He 
asked me to go up Snowdon with him, but when I asked 
him what the tramfare was, he was slightly snorty in his 
manner. How’s the novel getting on?” 

“It’ll be out in September. I corrected the final proofs 
last month. I think it’s rather good.” 

“Better than ‘Turbulence’ or ‘The Wayward Man’?” 


CHANGING WINDS 


361 


^‘Yes, I think so. I^m calling it ‘The Fennels.’ That’s 
the name of the people it’s about. I’ve taken an Ulster 
family and . . . well, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve taken 
an Ulster family and just shown it. My father likes it 
much better than anything else I’ve done, although he was 
very keen on ‘Turbulence.’ ” 

“How is your father?” 

‘ ‘ Oh, much better, thanks, but still a bit shaky. He hates 
all this Volunteer business in Ireland. You remember 
John Marsh, don’t you, and Galway? You saw them in 
Dublin that time! ...” Gilbert nodded his head and so 
Henry did not complete his sentence. “Well, they’re up 
to their necks in the opposition Volunteers. I saw John 
in Dublin yesterday for a few minutes. He was very ex- 
cited about the gun-running in Ulster ! Damned play-act- 
ing! He could hardly spare the time to say ‘How are 
you?’ to me, he was so anxious to be off to his drilling. 
He hasn’t done any writing for a long time now. He’s 
become very friendly with Mineely! ...” 

“Is that the Labour man?” 

“Yes. I liked him when I met him, but he’s fright- 
fully bitter since the strike. He’s got more brains than 
all the others put together, and he influences John tre- 
mendously. I don’t wonder at his bitterness. The em- 
ployers were brutal in that strike, Gilbert, and Mineely will 
never forget it. He’ll make trouble for them yet, and 
they’ll deserve all they get. He said to me ‘They won’t 
deal reasonably with us, so they can’t complain if we deal 
unreasonably with them. They set the police on to 
us. . . .’ ” 

“What’s he going to do then?” 

“I don’t know, but he’s drilling his men as hard as ever 
he can. He means to hit back. After he’d spoken about 
the police, he said, ‘The next time we go to them, we’ll 
have guns in our hands. Mebbe they ’ll listen to us then I ’ 
He’s like John ... he doesn’t care what happens to him- 
self. All those people, John and Galway and Mineely, 


362 


CHANGING WINDS 


have a contempt for death that I can’t understand. I 
loathe the thought of dying . . . but they don’t seem to 
mind. It’s their religion partly, I suppose, but it’s some- 
thing more than religion. If they were poor, like the slum 
people, I could understand it better. You can’t frighten 
them by threatening to kill them. Their life is such a rot- 
ten one that they’d be much better off if they were dead, 
even if there were no heaven, and I suppose they feel that 
. . . and of course the Catholic religion teaches them to 
despise life! But it isn’t all religious fervour or the ap- 
athy of people who ’re too poor to mind whether they live or 
die. Marsh and Galway and Mineely are moved by a sort 
of nationalistic ecstasy . . . Marsh and Galway more than 
Mineely, I think, because there’s a bitterness in him that 
isn’t in them. They think of Ireland first, and he thinks 
of starving workmen first. They’re Ireland mad. They 
really don’t value their lives a happorth. They’d love to 
be martyrised for Ireland. It’s a kind of lust, Gilbert. 
They get a sensual look on their faces . . . almost . . . 
when they talk of dying for Ireland.” 

*‘It’s a little silly of us English people who love life so 
much to try and govern a people like that,” said Gilbert. 

2 

Much had happened to them in the two years that had 
elapsed since the day on which Gilbert carried Henry off to 
Dublin. The Bloomsbury household had come to an end. 
Suddenly and, as it seemed to them, inexplicably, Mrs. 
Clutters had died. It had never occurred to any of them 
that Mrs. Clutters could die. They seldom saw her. The 
kitchen was her domain, and Magnolia was her messenger. 
If they had any preferences or prejudices concerning food, 
they made them known to Magnolia, and Magnolia made 
them known to Mrs. Clutters. Ninian returning home in 
an epicurean mood, might announce that he had seen mush- 
rooms in a greengrocer’s window. “Magnolia,” he would 


CHANGING WINDS 


363 


say, ^‘let there be mushrooms!” and Magnolia would an- 
swer, “Yes, sir, certainly, sir!” and behold in the morning 
there would be mushrooms for breakfast. Or Gilbert would 
give their opinion of a dish. “Magnolia, we do not like 
scrambled eggs. We like our eggs boiled, fried, poached, 
beaten up in milk, Mr. Graham even likes them raw, but 
none of us like them scrambled ! . . . ” and Magnolia would 
say, “Yes, sir, certainly, sir!” and so scrambled eggs ceased 
to be seen on their breakfast table. Magnolia always said, 
“Yes, sir, certainly, sir!” If they had informed her 
that the Judgment Day was to begin that afternoon 
at three o'clock. Magnolia, they felt sure, would say, “Yes, 
sir, certainly, sir!” and go on with her work. . . . There 
seemed to be no adequate excuse for Mrs. Clutters' death 
. . . “an' everythink goin' on so nice an' all!” as Mag- 
nolia said . . . and yet she had died. There had been de- 
lay in serving breakfast, and Roger, anxious to catch a 
train, had been impatient. 

“Magnolia!” he shouted from the door, “Magnolia!” 

“Yes, sir!” Magnolia answered in an agitated voice. 

They waited for her to add “Certainly, sir!” but she 
did not do so, and they looked oddly at each other, feeling 
that something unusual had happened. 

“We're waiting for breakfast,” Roger said in a less 
impatient voice. 

“Yes, sir, I'm cornin', sir! . . .” 

Magnolia appeared at the door, very red in the face and 
very worried in her looks, and placed a covered dish in 
front of Roger who was the father of the four, appointed 
to carve and to serve. 

“What's this?” Roger demanded when he had removed 
the cover. 

“Please, sir, it's eggs, sir! Fried eggs, sir! That's what 
it's supposed to be, sir!” Magnolia replied dubiously. 

“It's a bad imitation. Magnolia!” Gilbert said. “I 
think I'll just have bread and marmalade this morning!” 

He reached for the marmalade as he spoke, and Henry, 


CHANGING WINDS 


361 

eyeing the eggs with disrelish, murmured, “After you, Gil- 
bert ! ' ’ 

“Tell Mrs. Clutters I want her,’^ Roger said to Mag- 
nolia, 

“Please, sir, she’s not very well in herself this 
momin’. ...” 

“Not very well!” 

“Do you mean to say she’s ill?” Ninian shouted. 

“Yes, sir. It was me fried the eggs, sir!” 

“But . . . but she can’t be ill,” Ninian continued. 

“Well, she is, sir. That’s what she says any ’ow. ‘You’ll 
’ave to cook the breakfis yourself,’ she says to me, an’ when 
1 said I didn’t know ’ow, she said ‘Well, you must do the 
best you can, that’s all!’ an’ I done it, sir. She don’t look 
well at all! . . .” 

“How long has she been ill?” Roger asked. 

“I don’t know, sir. She didn’t tell me. She was 
groanin’ a bit yesterday an’ the day before, but she 
wouldn’t give in. I said to ’er, ‘If I was you, Mrs. Clut- 
ters, I’d ’ave a doctor an’ chance it!’ an’ she told me to 
’old me tongue, so of course I wasn’t goin’ to say no more, 
not after that. I mean to say, I can take a ’int as good as 
any one. ...” 

“We’d better send for a doctor,” Roger said, inter- 
rupting Magnolia. “I’ll telephone to Dunroon. He lives 
quite near!” Then he remembered his county court case. 
“You’d better telephone, Quinny ! I must catch this train. 
Take these . . . eggs away. Magnolia. We Won’t say any- 
thing more about them. You did your best !” 

“Yes, sir, I did, but I told ’er I didn’t know ’ow. . . 

“All right!” said Roger, passing the dish to her. 

3 

Dr. Dunroon suggested that they should send for Mrs, 
Clutters’ friends. 


CHANGING WINDS 365 

it serious, doctor?” Henry asked, and the doctor 
nodded his head. “She’s dying,” he said. 

‘ ‘ Dying ! ” 

Magnolia, disregarding the conventions, had stood by, 
openly listening to what they were saying, and when she 
heard the doctor say that Mrs. Clutters was dying, she let 
a howl out of her that startled them. The doctor turned 
to her quickly. 

‘ ‘ Hold your tongue, ’ ’ he said, ‘ ‘ or she 11 hear you. Any- 
body ’ud think you were dying by the noise you’re mak- 
ing!” 

Magnolia blubbered away. “I ’ate to ’ear of anybody 
dyin’,” she said. “I never been in a ’ouse before where 
it’s ’appened, an’ besides she’s been good to me!” Her 
mind wandered off at a tangent. “Any’ow,” she said, 
wiping her eyes, ‘ ‘ I done me best. No one can ’t never say 
I ain’t done me best, an’ the best can’t do no more!” 

“Has she got any friends, Magnolia? ...” 

It seemed to them to be extraordinary that this woman 
had lived in their house, had worked and cared for them, 
and yet was so much a stranger to them that now, in this 
time of her coming dissolution, they did not know where 
her friends were to be found, whether indeed, she had any 
friends. ‘ ‘ That ’s very English, ’ ’ Henry thought ; “ in Ire- 
land we know all about our servants!” 

“Well, I think ’e’s ’er ’usband,” Magnolia replied. 
“Any’ow, ’e was drunk when ’ecome! ...” 

They had assumed that Mrs. Clutters was a widow, a 
childless widow. . . . 

“I’ve seen ’im ’angin’ about two-three times, an’ when 
I said to ’er, ‘Mrs. Clutters, there’s your friend ’angin’ 
about the corner of the street, she tole me to mind me own 
business, an’ then she ’urried out. Of course, it ’adn’t got 
nothink to do with me, ’oo ’e was, an’ when she tole me 
to mind me own business, I took the ’int. ...” 

“Do you know where he lives?” Gilbert asked. 


366 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘^No, sir, I don’t. When she told me to mind me own 
business! ...” 

The approach of Death had made Magnolia amazingly 
garrulous. She said more to them that morning than she 
had said to them all the rest of the time she had been in 
their service . . . and mixed up with her reminiscences of 
what Mrs. Clutters had said to her and what she had said 
to Mrs. Clutters, there was a continual statement of her fear 
and dislike of death, followed by the assertion that no one 
’ad ever died in a house she’d worked in before. 

‘‘You’d think she was blaming us for it,” Gilbert said 
afterwards. 

“Well, you’d better go and ask her to tell you where her 
husband lives,” Henry said to her, but she shrunk away 
from him when he said that. 

“Oh, I couldn’t go near no one what was dyin’,” she 
said. “I ain’t used to it, an’ I don’t like it!” 

Ninian shoved her aside. “I’ll go,” he said. 

“We’d better get some one to look after her,” Gilbert 
proposed when Ninian had gone. “Magnolia’s no damn 
good! . . .” 

“No, sir, I ain’t . . . not with dead people I ain’t!” 

“Clear out. Magnolia!” Gilbert shouted at her. “Go 
and make the beds or sit in the kitchen or something!” 

“Yes, sir, certainly, sir!” Magnolia answered, and then 
she left the room. 

“I’ve never felt such a helpless ass in my life before,” 
Gilbert went on when she had shut the door behind her. 
“I simply don’t know what to do!” 

“We can’t do anything,” Henry murmured. “Dun- 
roon said he’d come in again in a short while. Perhaps if 
we were to get a nurse or somebody. There’s sure to be a 
Nurses’ Home near to. Can’t we ring up somebody?” 

He got hold of the telephone book and began to turn over 
the pages rapidly. 

“What are you looking for?” Gilbert asked. 

“Nursing Homes,” he answered. 


CHANGING WINDS 


367 


‘ ‘ That no good. Let’s send round to Dunroon^s! . . 

‘ ‘ He won ’t be there ! ’ ’ 

^‘Some one’ll be there. We’ll ring ’em up! . . .” 

Dr. Dunroon’s secretary was there, and she knew ex- 
actly what to do. ‘^Oh, very well,” she said in a voice so 
calm that Gilbert felt reassured. ^‘I’ll send some one 
round as soon as possible!” 

Ninian came down the stairs before they had finished 
telephoning to Dr. Dunroon’s secretary. 

‘‘I’m going to fetch her husband,” he whispered to 
Henry, and then he left them. 

4 

“Let’s go out,” Gilbert said suddenly to Henry. 

The nurse had arrived, and was busy in attendance on 
Mrs. Clutters. Magnolia, full of the antagonism which 
servants instinctively feel towards nurses, was maintain- 
ing a grievance in the kitchen. “Givin’ ’er orders, as if 
she was some one!” she was mumbling to herself. “Too 
bossy, she is! . . .” 

“It’s no good trying to do any work to-day,” Gilbert 
went on. “I ... I couldn’t make up things with her 
. . . up there!” 

They told Magnolia that they would have their meals 
out, and that she need not trouble to cook anything for 
them, and they sent for the nurse and explained their cir- 
cumstances to her. “That’s all right,” she said cheer- 
fully, “I’ll look after myself!” 

They set off towards Hampstead, but after a while they 
found themselves returning to Bloomsbury. They could 
not keep away from the house. . . . They tried to eat a 
meal at the Vienna Cafe, but they could not swallow the 
food, so they paid their bill and went away. They wan- 
dered into the British Museum, and tried to interest them- 
selves in Egyptology. . . . 

“This female,” said Gilbert, pointing to the mummy of 


368 


CHANGING WINDS 


the Priestess of Amen-Ka, “is supposed to bring frightful 
ill-luck to you if you squint at her. There was a fellow at 
Cambridge who was cracked about her . . . used to come 
here in vac. and make love to her ... sit here for hours 
spooning with a corpse. I often wanted to smack his face 
for him!’’ 

“Pose, I expect!” Henry replied. “I should have 
thought it was rather dull to get smitten on a woman who ’s 
as dead as this one is. . . .” 

They remembered ]\Irs. Clutters. . . . 

“Let’s go back and see what’s happened,” Gilbert said, 
turning away from the case which held the Priestess. . . . 

Ninian met them in the hall. “She’s dead,” he said. 
‘ ‘ Her husband ’s in the kitchen. I found him in a lodging- 
house in Camden Town, and I should say he’s a first-class 
rotter!” 


5 

They sat together that evening without speaking. There 
was to have been a meeting of the Improved Tories to talk 
over Roger’s plan for enlarging the Army and mitigating 
the problem of unemployment. They could not get messages 
to people in time, and so part of the evening was spent in 
whispered explanations at the door to those who turned 
up. 

“I think I’ll go to bed,” Ninian said, but he did not 
move, nor did any of them move. It was as if they wished 
to keep together as long as possible. 

Magnolia, red-eyed from weeping, had come to them 
earlier in the evening, declaring that she was frightened. 

“What are you afraid of?” Roger snapped at her. 

“ ’Er!” she answered. 

“But she’s dead! ...” 

“Yes, sir,” Magnolia said, “that’s why! I don’t like 
goin’ upstairs be meself, sir! . . .” 

‘ ‘ Oh, rubbish. Magnolia ! ’ ’ Roger exclaimed. 


CHANGING WINDS 


369 


can’t ’elp bein’ afraid, sir. I know she’s dead an’ 
can’t do me no ’arm . . . not that she’d want to do me any 
’arm ... I will say that for ’er . . . but some’ow I’m 
afraid all the same, sir. I can ’t ’elp it ! ” 

“I want to get a book out of my room,” Henry inter- 
jected, ‘‘so I’ll go upstairs with her!” 

“Oh, thank you, sir,” said Magnolia gratefully. “I 
know she wouldn’t ’arm me if she could ’elp it, not if 
she was alive any’ow, but they’re different when they’re 
dead! ...” She broke down, blubbering hopelessly. 
“Oh, I wish I was ’ome,” she moaned. 

‘ ‘ Come on. Magnolia ! ’ ’ Henry said, opening the door for 
her. 

“That girl’s getting on my nerves,” Gilbert murmured 
when she had gone. 

Magnolia followed Henry upstairs. They had to pass the 
room in which the dead woman lay, and Magnolia, when 
she reached the door, gave a little squeal of fright and ran 
forward, thrusting past Henry. . . . “Don’t be a fool. 
Magnolia ! ” he said, catching hold of her arm and steady- 
ing her. 

“I’m frightened, sir!” she moaned, looking up at him 
with dilated eyes. 

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. Come along!” 

He took her to her room and opened the door for her. 

“You’re all right now, aren’t you?” he said, switching 
on the light. 

“Yes, thank you, sir!” 

“Good-night, then!” 

“Good-night, sir!” 

When she had shut the door, he heard her turning the 
key in the lock, and he smiled at her precaution. “That 
wouldn’t hinder Mrs. Clutters’ ghost if she ... if she 
started to walk!” he thought to himself, as he descended 
the stairs to his room. He had switched off the light on 
Magnolia’s landing, but there was a light showing dimly 
up the stairs from the landing beneath. It shone faintly 


370 


CHANGING WINDS 


on the door of the room in which Mrs. Clutters^ body was 
lying. He went down the stairs towards the door, and 
then, half-way down, stopped. He could not look away 
from the door ... he felt that in a moment or two it would 
open, and Mrs. Clutters, in her grave-clothes, would stand 
in the shadow and look at him with fixed eyes. . . . 

“Don’t be a fool!” he said aloud, shaking his head and 
dashing his hand across his eyes as if he were trying to 
sweep something away. “I’m nervy, that’s what it is,” 
he went on, still speaking aloud. “I’m worse than Mag« 
nolia! ...” 

He descended the rest of the stairs, determined not to 
show any sign of fear, and then, as he passed the door, he 
shut his eyes and hurried by. He ran down the next flight 
of stairs, afraid to look back, and did not pause in his run- 
ning until he had reached the ground floor. He stood still 
in the hall for a few minutes to recover himself, and then 
he entered the room where the others were sitting. 

They looked up at him. 

“All right?” Ninian asked, and Henry nodded his head. 

“You haven’t brought the book,” Koger said. 

“No,” he answered, “No ... I changed my mind. I 
didn’t really want the book. I just said that to ... to get 
Magnolia out of tbe room!” 


6 

Mrs. Clutters’ husband insisted on seeing them after the 
funeral because, he said, he wished to thank them for all 
they had done for “ ’er!” He made a jerk over his shoul- 
der with his thumb when he said “ ’er,” and they gath- 
ered that he was indicating the direction of Kensal Green 
cemetery. He was very maudlin and drunk, and Ninian 
thought that he ought to be kicked. 

“I’m shorry,” he said, “to be thish con . . ^ condish’n, 
gemmem, but y’see it’s like this. A gemman said to me, 
y’see, ‘Bert,’ ’e says . . . thash my name . . . Bert, called 


CHANGING WINDS 


371 


after Queen's 'usban' . . . Gaw' bless 'er! . . . Alber' 
the Goo' they called Hm . . . not me, .oh, Lor' no! . . . 
thish gemmam, 'e says to me, ‘Bert,' 'e says, ‘come an' 'ave 
one!' an' so o' course I ^ad to 'ave one. Thash 'ow 'twas, 
see! Shorry to be in thish disgrashful state . . . thish 
sad occas'n, gemmem. Very shorry! I thank you!" He 
turned to leave them, staggering towards the door. “I 
ain't been a good 'usban' to 'er," he went on, again mak- 
ing the jerking gesture over his shoulder with his thumb. 
“Thash a fac'. I ain't. But I 'pologise. I’m shorry! 
Can't say no more'n that, can I? Goo'-ni', gemmem!" 

And then he staggered out. 

“Somebody ought to do him in," said Ninian, going to 
see that he left the house as quickly as possible. 

“Well," said Koger, when Ninian had returned, “what 
are we going to do next?" 

“Sack Magnolia," said Gilbert. 

“And then?" Roger went on. 

“I don’t know," Gilbert replied. 

“I suppose we can get another housekeeper," Henry 
suggested. 

“Yes, we could do that," said Gilbert. 

Roger got up and moved about the room for a few mo- 
ments. “I think I shall get married," he said at last. 
“I've got to get married some time, and I might as well 
get married now. This . . . this business seems to pro- 
vide an opportunity, don’t you think?" 

“It’s a pity to break up the house," Gilbert murmured. 

“It'll have to be broken up some day," Roger retorted. 

Ninian joined in. “There's talk of a big railway con- 
tract in South America, and I might have to go. Hare 
spoke of sending me. In about six months’ time. ..." 

“We might let the house furnished for the remainder of 
the lease," Roger went on. “Perhaps some one would take 
the furniture over altogether. ... I could use some of it, 
of course, for my house when I get married ! ' ' 

“You've settled it then?" said Gilbert. 


CHANGING WINDS 


372 


“Not exactly. I haven’t said anything to Rachel yet. 
The idea occurred to me in the chapel while the parson 
was saying the Burial Service ! ” 

“I could have hit that fellow,” Gilbert exclaimed. 
“Gabbling it off like that ! I suppose he was in a hurry to 
get home to tea ! ” 

They sat in silence for a while, each of them conjuring 
up the vision of the cold little service in the cemetery 
chapel. Magnolia, clothed in black, had sobbed loudly, 
while Mr. Clutters sniffed and said “A-men” very em- 
phatically, and the parson, regarding the little group of 
mourners with the curiosity of a man who is bored by death 
and the ritual of burial, gabbled away: NowisChristrisen 
fromthedeadandhecomethefirstfruitsofthemthatsleptforsince 

BymancamedeatKbymancamealso 

Theresurrectionofthedead. . . . 

“It means breaking up everything,” Gilbert still pro- 
tested. 

“Things are always breaking up,” said Roger. 

“I suppose so,” Gilbert replied. 

Henry had not taken part in the conversation, but had 
lain back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his 
head, lazily listening to what they were saying. 

“I don’t think I’d like to go on living here,” he ex- 
claimed, “particularly if Roger and Ninian go away. Per- 
haps we could share a flat or something, Gilbert?” 

“That’s a notion,” Gilbert answered. 

“There’s no reason why the Improved Tories should 
collapse just because I’m going to get married,” Roger 
asserted. “This house really isn’t the most convenient 
place to meet. We might hire a room in a hotel near the 
Strand and meet there. ...” 


7 

The house was let unfurnished. The incoming tenant 
was willing to take on the remainder of their lease and con- 


CHANGING WINDS 


373 


tinue in occupation of tlie house after its expiry, but he 
had furniture of his own, and so he had no use for theirs. 
Koger took his furniture to a small house in Hampstead, 
and offered to buy most of what was left, but they would 
not listen to his proposals. ‘‘Well give it to you as a 
wedding present,’^ they insisted. “If there’s anything 
you don’t want, we’ll sell it!” Magnolia was presented 
with a couple of months’ wages and a new dress, and bid- 
den to get another home as soon as she could conveniently 
do so . . . and then the house was abandoned. 

“It’s funny,” said Gilbert, as they shut the door be- 
hind them for the last time, “it’s funny that we hardly 
ever thought of that old woman, and yet, the minute she 
dies, we sort of go to pieces. We didn’t even know she’d 
got a husband. Her name was Jennifer. I saw it on the 
coffin lid! . . .” 

Their arrangements for quitting the house were not com- 
pleted for a month after the burial of Mrs. Clutters, and 
before they finally settled their affairs, Ninian was told 
that he was to proceed to South America with the junior 
partner. He was to have a couple of months’ leave . . . 
‘ ‘ I shall go down to Boveyhayne, ’ ’ he said . . . after which 
he would leave England for a lengthy while. “And then 
there were three!” said Gilbert, when Ninian told them 
of his appointment. “Three little clever boys,” he went 
on, “going up to fame. One little clever boy got married 
and then there were two ! . . . ” 

Until they could make some settlement of their future, 
they decided to live in a boarding house in Russell 
Square. 

“We shall loathe it,” Gilbert said, “but that will be 
good for us!” 


8 

And then Roger and Rachel got married. They walked 
into a Registrar’s office, with Gilbert and Ninian and 


374 


CHANGING WINDS 


Henry to bear them company, and made their declarations 
of fealty to each other. 

“My father would have been horrified,’^ Roger said at 
luncheon afterwards. “If he’d been alive, Rachel, we’d 
have had to get married in a church !” 

Rachel smiled. “I shouldn’t have minded, Roger!” she 
answered. “You’ll laugh, I know, when I tell you that 
half-way through the service I began to long for a sur- 
plice and the Voice that Breathed O’er Eden. A marriage 
in a church is a lot prettier than one in a Registrar’s 
office! ...” 

“If only the Mayor of the Borough had performed the 
ceremony,” Gilbert lamented. “In his nice furry red 
robes and cocked hat, joining you two together in the name 
of the Borough of Holbom, he’d have looked rather jolly! 
Roger, we ought to get the Improved Tories to consider 
the question of Civil Marriage. We want more beauty in 
it. Rachel, my dear, I haven’t kissed you yet. I look 
upon myself as Roger’s best man, and I ought to kiss you!” 

“Very well, Gilbert,” she answered, turning her face 
towards him. 

“You’ve deceived us all, Rachel,” he said as he kissed 
her. “We’d made up our minds to hate you because you 
were taking our little Roger from us, and at first we 
thought we were right to hate you because you were so 
aggressive to us, but you’ve deceived us. We don’t hate 
you. We like you, Rachel!” 

“Do you, Gilbert?” She turned to Ninian and Henry. 
“Do you like me, too?” she said. 

“I shouldn’t mind marrying you myself,” Ninian re- 
plied. 

“I don’t see why Gilbert should get all the kisses,” said 
Henry. “After all, I more or less gave you away, didn’t 
I? I was there anyhow! . . 

So she kissed Ninian and Henry too. Then, a little 
later, Roger and she went off to spend a honeymoon in 
Normandy. 


CHANGING WINDS 


375 


9 

“I feel horribly lonely somehow/’ said Gilbert to Henry. 
Ninian, in a hurry to catch the train for Boveyhayne at 
Waterloo, had left them at Charing Cross. 

Henry nodded his head. 

“This marrying and giving in marriage is the devil, 
isn’t it?” Gilbert went on. “We ought to cheer ourselves 
up, Quinny!” 

“We ought, Gilbert!” 

“Let’s go and see my play. Perhaps that’ll make us 
feel merry and bright! ...” 

“No,” said Henry. “It wouldn’t. It ’ud depress us. 
We’d keep thinking of Ninian and Koger. I think we 
ought to get drunk, Gilbert, very and incredibly 
drunk. ...” 

“I should feel like Mrs. Clutters’ husband if I did that,” 
Gilbert answered. “Aren’t there any other forms of de- 
bauchery? Couldn’t we go to a music-hall or a picture- 
palace or something ? Or we might discuss our fu- 
ture! . . .” 

“I’m sick of this boarding house we’re in,” Henry 
exclaimed. 

“So am I, but I don’t feel like setting up house again. 
I’m certain you’d go and get married the moment we’d 
settled into a place. ...” 

“I’m not a marrying man, Gilbert,” Henry interrupted. 

“Well, what are you, Quinny?” 

“I don’t know!” 

They were wandering aimlessly along the streets. They 
had drifted along Regent Street, and then had drifted 
into Oxford Street, and were going slowly in the direction 
of Marble Arch. 

“Quinny!” said Gilbert after a while. 

“Yes?” Henry answered. 

“Have you . . . have you seen Cecily since you came 
back?” 


376 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Yes. Twice!’’ 

Gilbert did not ask the question which was on the tip 
of his tongue, but Henry was willing to give the answer 
without being asked. 

“She didn’t appear to know I’d been away,” he said. 

“She knew all the same! ...” 

“She just said, ‘Hilloa, Paddy!’ and went on talking to 
the other people who were there too. I tried to outstay 
them, but Jimphy came in the first time, and there was a 
painter there the second time, who wouldn’t budge. He’s 
painting her portrait. I’ve not seen her since. ...” 

“You’re glad, aren’t you, that I kidnapped you, 
Quinny ? ’ ’ 

“In a way, yes!” 

“You got on with your book, anyhow. You’d never 
have done that if you’d stayed in town, trailing after 
Cecily ! ” 

“I can’t quite make you out, Gilbert,” Henry said, turn- 
ing to his friend. “Are you in love with Cecily?” 

Gilbert nodded his^ head. ‘ ‘ Of course, I am, but what ’s 
the good? Cecily doesn’t love me any more than she 
loves you. She doesn’t love any man particularly. She’s 
. . . just an Appetite. You and I are no more to her 
than . . . than the caramel she ate last Tuesday. The 
only hope for us is that we shall grow out of this caramel 
state or at all events get the upper hand of it. . . . In the 
meantime, what are we going to do?” 

“Work, I suppose. ‘Turbulence’ is nearly finished, and. 
I’m itching to get on with a new story ‘I Ve thought of. 
I’m calling it ‘The Wayward Man.’ ...” 

“We might go into the country. ...” 

“Or hire a furnished flat for a while. ...” 

“Or do something. . . . Lordy God, Quinny, we’re get- 
ting frightfully vague and loose-endy. We really must 
pull ourselves together. There’s a bun-shop somewhere 
about. Suppose we have tea?” 


CHANGING WINDS 


377 


10 

They took a furnished flat in Buckingham Street, and 
lived there while Henry completed “Turbulence” and saw 
it through the press. Gilbert had finished another comedy 
soon after the production of “The Magic Casement,” and 
Sir Geoffrey Mundane had asked for a first option on it. 
“The Magic Casement” was not a great popular success, 
but it “paid its way,” as Sir Geoffrey said. It was per- 
formed for a hundred and twenty times in England, and 
for three weeks in America, where it failed lamentably. 
“I never did think much of a republic!” Gilbert said 
when he heard of the play’s failure. 

Koger and Rachel had settled in their house in Hamp- 
stead soon after Gilbert and Henry had taken the fur- 
nished flat, and after a while, some of the old routine of 
their lives, except that part of it represented by Ninian, 
went on as before. Most of Ninian ’s leave was spent in 
quelling his mother’s alarms about his journey to South 
America. “It’s a splendid chance far me, mother!” he 
insisted. “It’s jolly decent of old Hare to give it to me!” 

“But it’s so far away, Ninian, dear, and if anything 
were to happen to you! ...” 

“Nothing’ll happen to me, mother . . . nothing serious 
anyhow. Heaps of chaps go off to places like that without 
turning a hair!” 

“But I’ve only got you, Ninian!” Mrs. Graham ob- 
jected. 

“You’ve got Mary, too, and I shall come back to you!” 

One evening, as they walked along the road that leads to 
Sidmouth, she put her arm in his, and drew him near to 
her. 

“Ninian, dear,” she said very softly and hesitatingly 
as if she were afraid to say all that was in her mind. 

“Yes, mother!” 

“Ninian, I sometimes wish ...” 

Again she hesitated, and again he said, “Yes, mother?” 


378 


CHANGING WINDS 


Her speech took another direction. “There have been 
Grahams at Boveyhayne for four hundred years, dear, and 
there’s only you left now.” 

He looked at her uncomprehendingly. ‘‘Well, 
mother! ...” 

“My dear, we can’t let it go away from us. It’s us, 
and we’re it, and if anything were to happen to you, and 
a stranger were to come here!” 

“But, my dear mother,” he interrupted, “nothing’s 
going to happen to me, and no one’s going to get Bovey- 
hayne away from us. Why should any one ? ...” 

She put her free hand on his sleeve. “When Koger 
married Rachel,” she said, “I wished ... I wished that 
you were Roger, Ninian!” 

“You want me to get married, mother?” 

She did not answer, but her clasp on his arm tightened. 

“A chap can’t marry a girl just for the sake of getting 
married, mother! ...” 

“No, dear, I know, but ...” 

“I’ve not seen a girl yet that I WEinted particularly. 
You see, I’ve been awfully busy at my job! ... I know 
how you feel, mother, about Boveyhayne, and I feel like 
that myself sometimes. I used to think it was rather rot 
all this talk about Family and keeping on and . . . and 
that kind of thing, but I can’t help feeling proud of . . . 
of all those old chaps who went before me, and ... all 
that, and I’d hate to break the line . . . only I can’t just 
go up to a girl and . . . and say, ‘We want some . . . some 
babies in our house ! ’ . . . ” 

“No, dear, you can’t say that, of course, but there are 
plenty of nice girls about, and if you would just . . . just 
think of some of them, instead of always thinking of works 
and tunnels and things ! ... Of course, I know that tun- 
nels are very interesting, Ninian, but . . . but Bovey- 
hayne! ...” 

She did not say any more. She stood by the gate of a 
field, looking over the valley of the Axe to the hilly country 


CHANGING WINDS 


379 


that separates Dorset from Devon, seeing nothing because 
her eyes were full of tears. He slipped his arm from hers 
and put it round her waist and drew her close to him. 
“All right, mother!’’ he said. 

“My dear!” she said, reaching up and kissing him. 

11 

They dined together on Ninian’s last night in England. 
Rachel, with fine understanding, insisted that they should 
dine alone, although they urged her to join them. 

“I say, you chaps,” Ninian said to them, “you might 
go and see my mater sometimes. She’d be awfully glad. 
Quinny, you haven’t been to Boveyhayne for centuries. 
. . . If you’d go, now and then, you’d cheer the mater 
up. She’s awfully down in the mouth about me going!” 
^ ^ Righto, Ninian ! ’ ’ said Gilbert. 

“Mary was saying what a long time it was since you 
were there, Quinny,” Ninian went on. 

“Did sheT’ Henry answered. 

“Yes. I hope you’ll go down sometime.” 

“I will,” he said. 


THE SECOND CHAPTER 


1 

Mrs. Graham invited Gilbert and Henry to spend Christ- 
mas at Boveyhayne, and they gladly accepted her invita- 
tion, but a week before they were due to go to Devonshire, 
Mr. Quinn fell ill, and Henry, alarmed by the reports 
which were sent to him by Hannah, wrote to Mrs. Graham 
to say that he must travel to Ireland at once. He hurried 
home to Ballymartin, and found that his father was more 
ill even than Hannah had hinted. 

“I wouldn’t have let her send for you, Henry!” he 
said, apologetically, “only I was afraid ... I mightn’t 
see you again!” 

He tried to cheer his father by protesting that in a little 
while he would be astride his horse again, directing the 
farm experiments as vigorously as ever, but ]\Ir. Quinn 
shook his head. “I don’t think so, Henry!” he said. 
“I’ll not be fit for much anyway. You’ll have to lend a 
hand with the estate, my son.” 

“I’ll help all I can, father, but I’m not much of an 
agriculturist! ...” 

“Well, you can’t be everything. That new book of 
yours . . . the one you sent me the other day! ...” 

“ ‘Turbulence,’ father?” 

“Aye. It’s a gran’ book, that. I’d like well to be 
able to write a book of that sort. I’m proud of you, 
Henry !” 

Henry blushed and turned away shyly, for direct praise 
always embarrassed him, but he was very pleased with his 


380 


CHANGING WINDS 


381 


father’s praises which gave him greater pleasure than the 
praises of any one else, even Gilbert. 

“You’ll stay home a while, now you’re here, Henry, 
son, won’t you?” 

“Yes, father, as long as you like!” 

“That’s right. You’ll be able to work away here in 
peace and quietness. Nobody’ll disturb you. I suppose 
you’re started on another book?” 

Henry told him of “The Wayward Man.” . . . 

“That’s a great title,” he said. “You’re a gran’ one 
at gettin’ good titles for your books, Henry. I was readin’ 
a bit in the paper about you the other day, an’ I near 
wrote to the man an’ told him you were my son, I was that 
pleased. Ease this pillow under my head, will you ? 
Thanks, boy!” 

He took Henry’s hand in his. “I’m right an’ glad to 
have you home again,” he said, smiling at him. “Right 
an’ glad!” 


2 

The whole of “The Wayward Man” was completed be- 
fore Mr. Quinn was well enough to move about easily. 
Henry spent the morning and part of the afternoon on his 
novel, giving the rest of the day to his father. Sometimes, 
in his walks, Henry met young farmers and labourers re- 
turning from the Orange Hall where they had been doing 
such drill as can be done indoors. On Saturday after- 
noons, they would set off to join other companies of the 
Ulster Volunteer Force in a route march. Jamesey Mc- 
Keown had begun to learn wireless telegraphy and was 
already expert with flag-signals and the heliograph. Peter 
Logan, who had married Sheila Morgan, had been pro- 
moted to be a sergeant. ... “I suppose Sheila’s a nurse?” 
Henry said to him the first time he met him. 

“She’s nursin’ a wean, Mr. Henry!” Logan replied. 


CHANGING WINDS 


winking heavily. “WeVe a couple already, an’ there’ll 
be another afore long. She’s as punctual as the clock, 
Sheila. She’s a great woman for fine, healthy childher!” 

“Well, that’s what you want, isn’t it?” Henry said. 

“Aye, you’re right, sir. You are, indeed. There’s 
nothin’ til beat a lot of young childher about the house. 
Will you come an’ see the drill? ...” 

Henry went to see a display in a field just outside Bally- 
martin. The men marched and counter-marched, and 
charged and skirmished, and did physical drill until they 
were tired and sweating, while their women looked on in 
pride and pleasure. Sheila was there, too, and Henry 
went to her and sat beside her while the military man- 
oeuvres took place. She made no impression on him now 
... he saw her simply as a countrywoman in the family 
way ... a little blowsy and dishevelled and red with 
exertion. 

“For dear sake, Henry!” she said in greeting, holding 
out her hand to him. 

“Well,” he said, “when does the war begin?” 

“Aw, now,” she answered, “don’t ask me! Sure, I’m 
never done coddin’ Peter about it. But it’s the grand 
health, Henry. You’d never believe the differs it’s made 
to that wee lad, Gebbie, that serves in Dobbin’s shop. I 
declare to my God, he had a back as roun’ as a hoop ’til 
they started these Volunteers, but now he’s like a ramrod. 
He’s a marvel, that lad! Teeshie Halpin’s taken a notion 
of him since he straightened up, an’ as sure as you’re 
living she’ll have him the minute they can scrape a few 
ha’pence thegether to buy a wheen of furniture. Well, if 
the Volunteers never does no more nor that, they’ll have 
done well, for dear knows, Andy Gebbie was an affront to 
the Almighty, an’ him stoopin’ that way!” 

“But are they going to fight, Sheila? ...” 

“Ah, get away with you, man!” said Sheila. “What 
in the name of all that’s good an’ gracious, would they be 
fightin’ for? Sure, they’re lettin’ on, to frighten the Eng- 


CHANGING WINDS 


383 


lish out of their wits!'’ She changed the talk to more 
interesting discourse. “I've two childher now," she said. 

“So Peter was telling me," he answered. 

“A wee boy an' a wee girl. An' terrible wee tories they 
are, too 1 They 're about somewhere with their aunt Kate. 
An' how an' all are you, Henry?" 

“I'm very well, Sheila." 

“You’re lookin' gran'. I hear you write books, but I 
never read noan of them 1 ' ' 

“Would you like to read them?" he asked. 

“I would, fine. Dear, oh, I often wonder how anybody 
can write books. I never was no hand at writin' any- 
thing, not even a letter. But I suppose there's a knack in 
it, an' once you learn it, you're all right!" 

“Yes," he replied, “that's about it. I’ll send my books 
to you. I'd have sent them before if I'd thought you'd 
care to read them!" 

“You might 'a' knowed rightly, I'd be glad to have 
them. ..." 


3 

But Sheila's good-natured scorn for the Ulster Volunteer 
Force did not convince Henry. One could not look at these 
drilling men, and feel satisfied that they were pretending 
to be angry or that they did not mean what they said, when 
they declared that they would die in the last ditch rather 
than consent to be governed by Nationalists. Mr. Quinn 
spent much time in denouncing Sir Edward Carson and 
his friends, but he did not doubt for a moment that the 
followers would fight. He had very little faith in the sin- 
cerity of the politicians. “That fellow, F. E. Smith," he 
exclaimed wrathfully, “what in hell is he doin' over here, 
I'd like to know? I'd like to kick his backside for him, an' 
pack him back to wherever he come from!" And there 
was F. E. Robinson, too, bounding about Ulster like a 
well-polished young gentleman from the Gaiety chorus, 


384 


CHANGING WINDS 


and delivering historical orations that filled the crowd with 
amazement. 

“He’s the great cod, that lad!” Mr. Quinn said.* ‘^He’s 
worse nor Smith. He come down here to Ballymartin, an’ 
he made a speech all about King James’s foreign policy, 
and mentioned a whole lot of people that the Or’ngemen 
never heard tell of. It would ’a’ done well for a lecture 
at the Queen’s College . . . you should ’a’ seen the men 
nudgin’ one another, an’ askin’ who he was, an’ what in the 
name of God he was talkin’ about! ‘Why doesn’t he curse 
the Pope an’ ’a’ done wi’ it!’ one fellow said to another. 
‘That lad curse anybody!’ says the other one. ‘Sure, he’d 
near boak ^ himself if he done the like of that ! ’ Aye, 
there’s a lot of bletherin’ about the Volunteers, but all the 
same I don ’t like the look o ’ things, an ’ if they ’re not care- 
ful there ’ll be bother. It ’ll take the men at the top all their 
time to hold the bottom ones down. It ought never to 
have been allowed to begin with. The minute they started 
their drillin’ an’ palaver, they ought to ’a’ been stopped. 
Have you seen John Marsh lately, Henry?” 

“I saw him when I was in Dublin a few months ago 
with Gilbert Farlow. He’s drilling, too! ...” 

“It’s fearful, that’s what it is. Fightin’ an’ wranglin’ 
like that! I wish I could get him up here a while. I’d 
talk to him, an’ try an’ put some sense into him. Do you 
think would he come if I was to ask him?” 

‘ ‘ I daresay, father. Shall I write to him for you ? ’ ’ 

“Aye, do, Henry. I like that fellow quaren well, an’ 
I’d be sorry if any harm come to him. He’s the sort gets 
into any bother that’s about ! Write to him now, will you, 
an’ you’ll catch the evenin’ mail!” 

Henry got writing materials and wrote the letter in 
his father’s room. “Will that do?” he said, passing it 
to Mr. Quinn for inspection. 

“That’ll do fine,” Mr. Quinn replied, when he had 
finished reading it. “Matier’ll take it to the letter- 
box!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


385 


don’t know what the world’s cornin’ to,” he went on, 
a little fractiously. “There’s a fellow wouldn’t harm a 
fly, drillin’ and gettin’ ready to shoot people. An’ Irish 
people, too! One lot of Irishmen wantin’ to shoot another 
lot! . . . They’re out of their minds, that’s what’s wrong 
wi’ them. There ’s Matier . . . you’d think at his age, he’d 
have more sense, but nothin’ll do him but he must be off 
of an evenin’ formin’ fours. And what for? I!d like to 
know. I says to him, ‘William Henry, who do you want 
to kill?’ ‘The Home Rulers an’ the Papishes!’ says he. 
‘Quit, man,’ says I, ‘an’ talk sense.’ ‘I am talkin’ sense,’ 
says he. ‘You’re not,’ I says to him. ‘D’you mean to 
stan’ there an’ tell me you want to kill Hugh Kearney?’ 
‘I do not indeed,’ says he. ‘What put that notion in your 
head?’ ‘Isn’t he a Catholic an’ a Home Ruler?’ says I. 
I had him properly when I said that, for him an’ Hugh 
Kearney is like brothers to one another. ‘Would you kill 
him?’ I says to Matier. ‘No, sir, I wouldn’t,’ he answers 
me back. ‘I’d shed me heart’s blood for him!’ And he 
would, too! ... I’ve always been against Home Rule, 
Henry, an’ you know well why, but I’m more against this 
sort of thing than I am against that, and anyway I’m 
not so sure it wouldn’t be better in the long run. There’s 
too much Socialism in England, an’ we have to put 
up with the results of it because of the Union. The So- 
cialists get this law an’ that law passed, an’ we have 
to suffer it in Ireland because we’re tied up to Eng- 
land. . . .” 


4 

John Marsh came to Ballymartin. Henry had sent a 
private note to him, urging him to accept his father’s 
invitation. “He’s very he wrote, “atid he would like 
to see you. ■ Pm afraid he may not get better , although 
there’s a chance. . . 


386 


CHANGING WINDS 


“There you are, John Marsh!” Mr. Quinn said to him, 
as he entered the bedroom. “An’ what damned nonsense 
are you up to now, will you tell me?” 

John smiled at him. “You’re to get well at once,” he 
answered. “We can’t have you lying ill at a time like 
this!” 

“An’ aren’t you an’ the like of you enough to make any 
man ill? Come here to me, an’ let me have a look at you. 
I can’t see you rightly in that light. . . . You’re lookin’ 
pale on it, John. What ails you?” 

“I’m tired, that’s all. I shall be all right in the morn- 
ing. . . .” 

“You’re workin’ yourself to death ! That’s what you’re 
doin’. Sit down there by the side of the bed till I talk to 
you ! ’ ’ 

John drew a chair up to the old man’s bedside, and sat 
down on it as he had been bidden. Henry, anxious lest 
his father should overtax his strength, sat at the foot of 
the bed. 

“An’ what are you drillin’ for?” Mr. Quinn demanded 
of John. 

“We must defend ourselves, Mr. Quinn. ...” 

“Defend me granny! An’ who’s goin’ to harm you?” 
Henry made a motion as if he would quieten his father, 
but the old man shook him off. “Leave me alone, Henry,” 
he said, “an’ let me have my say!” He turned again to 
John Marsh. “Isn’t there the English Army to defend 
you if anybody tries to injure you? What call have you 
to start another lot of damned volunteers to be makin’ ill- 
feelin’ in the country for?” 

“We must be prepared to defend ourselves,” John in- 
sisted. “We can’t trust the English. ...” 

And so they wrangled until Mr. Quinn, too tired to con- 
tinue, sent Henry and Marsh from his room. 

“Take him away an’ talk to him, Henry!” he said. 
“He’ll not be happy ’til he’s in bother, that lad. Away on 
with you, John! ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


387 


5 

It was while John Marsh was at Ballymartin, that the 
mutiny at the Curragh Camp took place. The soldiers 
had been ordered to Ulster to maintain order . . . and 
their officers had refused to go. 

“I thought you said we could depend on the English 
Army/’ John exclaimed to Mr. Quinn in very excited 
tones. ‘‘This looks like it, doesn’t it? If they’d been 
ordered to march on us, they’d have done it quick enough. 
That’s why we’re drilling, Mr. Quinn. We’ve got to de- 
fend ourselves. Supposing the Ulster Volunteers attack 
us! . . 

“They won’t,” Mr. Quinn snapped at him. 

“But supposing they do, are we to sit down and let 
them do it? I tell you we daren’t trust to the English. 
They’ll promise everything and give nothing. That’s the 
nature of them. They’re a treacherous race! ...” 

“I wish to my God you had some sense, John Marsh,” 
said Mr. Quinn. 

“Oh, I know you think I’m a madman, but you can’t 
deny facts, and the facts are that the English have sys- 
tematically betrayed the Irish throughout their history. 
If there’s a war on, they go down on their hands and 
knees and ask us to win it for them . . . they offer us the 
sun and the moon and the stars for our help . . . but the 
minute they’ve got over their fright, they start plotting 
to get out of their promises. They’ve done it before and 
they’ll do it again. I want our Volunteers to be more 
than a defensive organisation. I want them to be an 
offensive organisation. If we don’t look out very sharply 
we’ll find that the English have ruined Ireland again. 
They’ve started to do it openly now. You’ve heard, 
haven’t you, about the Cunard Line and Queenstown ?...’' 
It appeared that the Cunard Line had abandoned Queens- 
town as a port of call for American liners. . . . That means 
absolute ruin for Queenstown! . . . Casement tried to 


388 


CHANGING WINDS 


get the Hamburg-Amerika line to send their boats in- 
stead, and they’d agreed to do so . . . all the prepara- 
tions were made to welcome the first of their boats . . . and 
then the scheme was abandoned by the Germans. The 
English Foreign office got at them ! . . . Oh, of course, it ’s 
only Ireland, and Irish people and Irish interests can be 
neglected and ruined without a blush so long as the Eng- 
lish interests are safe. . . . More and more I’m convinced 
that we’ve got to separate from them. They’re a com- 
mon-minded people. You know they are! They’re huck- 
sters . . . they think in ... in ha’porths! ...” 

6 

The attempt to bring John Marsh to reason was a failure, 
and he went back to Dublin more resolved to make the 
Volunteers an offensive body than he had been when he 
arrived. He had seen a review of the Ulster Volunteer 
Force in Belfast and the setness of the men impressed him. 
“They’ll fight all right,” he said. “I don’t suppose their 
leaders have any stomach for fighting, but the men have 
plenty. By God, I wish they were on our side!” 

“Well, why don’t you try to get them on your side?” 
Henry demanded. “Your notion of conciliating them is to 
start getting ready to fight them!” 

“We have tried to conciliate them,” Marsh replied. 
“When Carson formed his Provisional Government, some 
of us asked him to extend it to the whole of Ireland. Do 
you think we wouldn’t rather have Carson than Redmond? 
He’s got some stuff in him anyhow, but Redmond! . . .” 

He made a gesture of contempt. “I’ve no use,” he said, 
“for a man who looks so like Napoleon without being Napo- 
leon!” 

“But Carson wouldn’t,” he went on. “It’s all very 
well to say ‘Conciliate Ulster!’ but Ulster won’t let us con- 
ciliate her. The Ulster people have nothing but contempt 
for us, and they ram Belfast down our throats until we’re 


CHANGING WINDS 


389 


sick of it. And a lot of their prosperity is just good luck 
and . . . and favour. They’ve been well looked after by 
the English, and they’re near everything . . . coalfields 
and Lancashire. Do you think if Galway was where Bel- 
fast is, it wouldn’t be as prosperous? If they’re so al- 
mighty clever as they say they are, why don’t they come 
and lead us, instead of clinging on to England like a pam- 
pered kid? ...” 

Henry listened patiently to John. There must, he 
thought, be some powerful motive for so much passion. 
He had come to look upon nationality as a contemptible 
thing, a fretful preoccupation with little affairs, but when 
he faced the fury of John Marsh, he could not deny that 
this passion, whether it be little or big, will bring the world 
to broils until it be satisfied. He did not now feel that 
irritation which he had formerly felt when John derided 
the English or called them by opprobrious names. He could 
make allowances for the anger of the dispossessed. “That 
kind of talk,” he thought, “kills itself. Marsh has only to 
let himself go along enough, and he’ll let himself go alto- 
gether. He’ll exhaust his abuse. ...” 

He remembered that when Gilbert and he had arrived 
in Dublin after their flight from London, they had tried 
to discover just what Marsh and his friends meant to do 
with Ireland when they had gained control of the country 
. . . but Marsh and his friends had no plans. They talked 
vaguely of the national spirit and of self-government, but 
they could not be induced to name a specific reform to 
which they would set their minds. Some one had given a 
copy of Dale’s Report of Irish Elementary Education to 
Henry, and he had read it with something like horror. It 
seemed to him that here was the whole Irish problem, that 
when this was solved, everything was solved . . . but when 
he spoke of it to Marsh and his friends he found that 
most of them had never heard of Dale’s Report, were 
scarcely aware of the fact that there was an Irish educa- 
tion problem. “We’ll deal with that after we’ve got 


390 


CHANGING WINDS 


Home Rule/’ they would say, waving their hands in the 
airy fashion in which futile people always wave their hands. 
And so it was with everything else. They would deal with 
that after they had got Home Rule. Gilbert and Henry 
had explored the Combe and the dreadful swamp of slums 
reaching up from Ringsend and spilling almost into the 
gardens of Merrion Square. . . . 

‘‘But don’t they know about this?” Gilbert asked in 
amazement. “I mean, haven’t they any eyes ... or 
noses?” 

“They’ll deal with that after they’ve got Home Rule,” 
Henry answered miserably. 

They had gone back to their lodgings in a state of deep 
depression. Wherever one went in Dublin, one was fol- 
lowed by little whining children, demanding alms in the 
cadging voice of the professional beggar, and many of them 
were hopelessly diseased. . . . 

“I thought the Irish were very religious and moral?” 
Gilbert said once, as they passed a group of sickly chil- 
dren sitting at the entrance to a court of Baggot Street. 

“Why?” Henry replied. 

“These kids are syphilitic,” Gilbert answered. “The 
place is full of syphilis ! ” 

‘ ‘ Dublin is a garrison town and a University town, ’ ’ said 
Henry, with a shrug of his shoulders. “There are eight 
barracks in Dublin ... it’s the most be-barracked city in 
the Kingdom. . . . Oh, we’re terribly moral, we Irish. 
As moral as ostriches. If you pick up a Dublin newspa- 
per, it’s a million to one you’ll see a reference to ‘the in- 
nate purity of the Irish women,’ written probably by a 
boozy reporter. No, Gilbert, you’re wrong about these 
kids. They’re not syphilitic. . . . Good Lord, no! That’s 
English misgovernment. Wait ’til they’ve got Home Rule 
. . . and those kids won’t be syphilitic any morel ...” 

They had met a man at Ernest Harper’s who wore the 
kilt of the Gael, and had listened to him while he bleated 
about the beautiful purity of the Irish women. He was 


CHANGING WINDS 


391 


a convert to Catholicism and Nationalism and anti-Eng- 
lishism, and he had the appearance of a nicely-brought-up 
saint. ‘‘He looks as if he had just committed a miracle, 
and is afraid he may do it again Gilbert whispered to 
Henry. This man purred at them. “The priests have 
kept Ireland pure,’’ he murmured. “Many harsh things 
have been said about them, but no one has ever denied that 
they have kept Ireland pure ! ’ ’ 

“I do, ” said Henry, full of desire to shock the Celt. 

“You do? . . 

“Anybody can keep a man pure by putting him in 
prison. That’s what the priests have done. They’ve put 
the Irish people in gaol! ...” 

The kilted Celt shrank away from him. He was sorry, 
but he could not possibly sit still and listen to such con- 
versation. He hoped that he was as broad-minded as any 
one, but there were limits. . . . Very wisely, he thought, 
the Church I . . . 

‘ ‘ Blast the Church ! ’ ’ said Henry, and the kilted Celt had 
gone shivering away from him. 

“That kind of person makes me foam at the mouth,” 
Henry muttered to Gilbert. “The Irish people aren’t any 
purer than any other race. It’s all bunkum, this talk 
about their ‘innate purity.’ If you clap the population 
into gaol, you can keep them ‘pure,’ in act anyhow, and 
if the priests won’t let the sexes mingle openly, th6y can 
get up a spurious purity just like that. If a girl gets 
into trouble in Ireland, she goes to the priest and con- 
fesses, and the priest takes jolly good care that the man 
marries her. That’s why the rate of illegitimacy is so low. 
And anyhow, the bulk of the people are agricultural, and 
country people are more continent than any other people. 
It’s the same in England, but the English don’t go about 
bleating of their ‘innate purity.’ I tell you, Gilbert, the 
trouble with this country is self-consciousness. ...” 

“Home Rule ought to cure that!” said Gilbert. 

“That’s why I’m a Home Ruler,” Henry replied. “If 


CHANGING WINDS 


S9S 

you chaff these people, they get angry and want to fight. 
If anybody were to get up in a public hall and say about 
the Irish one-quarter of the things that Bernard Shaw says 
in public about the English, the audience would fiay him 
alive and wreck the building. They’re too little to stand 
chaff easily. It takes a big people to bear criticism good- 
naturedly. . . . All the same, Gilbert, your damned coun- 
trymen are to blame for all this ! ’ ’ 

‘‘I know that,” said Gilbert, “but your damned coun- 
trymen seem determined to remain like it ! ” 

8 

Mr. Quinn and Henry had talked of Ireland and of John 
Marsh, after John had returned to Dublin. 

“Sometimes,” said Mr. Quinn, “I think that the best 
thing for Ireland would be to let the two sides fight. That 
might bring them together. One damned good scrap . . . 
and they might shake hands and become reconciled. There 
was as much antagonism and bitterness between the North 
and South in America as there is between the North and 
South in Ireland . . . and on the whole, I think the Civil 
War did a lot of good!” 

“It’s a damned queer country, Henry!” he went on, 
lying down and drawing the bedclothes up about his neck. 
“Damned queer!” 

“I suppose they all know what they’re up to,” he con- 
tinued, looking intently at the ceiling. ‘ ‘ But I don ’t ! ” 

“Are you comfortable, father?” Henry asked, bending 
anxiously over Mr. Quinn who had a grey, tired look on 
his face. 

“Yes, thank you, Henry, I’m . . . I’m comfortable 
enough!” He turned his head slightly and gazed at 
Henry for a few moments without speaking. Then he 
smiled at him. “I tried hard to make an Irishman out of 
you, Henry,” he said. 

“I am an Irishman, father!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


393 


‘‘Aye, but a very Irishman. Many’s a time I wonder 
what you are. What are you, Henry? You’re not Eng- 
lish an’ you’re not Irish. What are you?” 

“I don’t know, father. I’m very Irish when I’m in 
England, and I ’m very English when I ’m here ! ’ ’ 

“That’s no good, Henry. All you do is to make both 
sides angry. You should be something all the time!” 

“I try to be fair,” said Henry. 

“That’ll not lead you very far. Well, well, the world’s 
the world, and there ’s an end of it 1 ” 

9 

Sitting in the garden that evening, looking towards the 
hazy hills, Henry wondered, too, what he was. Indeed, 
he told himself, he loved Ireland, but then he loved Eng- 
land, also. Once, when he was in Trinity, he had trudged 
up into the mountains, and had sat on a stone and gazed 
down on the city and, beyond it, to the sea, and while he 
had sat there, a great love of his country had come into his 
heart, and he had found himself irrationally loving the 
earth about him, just because it was Irish earth. He 
had tried to check this love which was conquering him, 
and he had scraped up a handful of earth and rubbed 
his fingers in it. “Soil,” he had murmured aloud. 
“Just soil . . . like any other soil!” and then, suddenly, 
overpoweringly, irresistibly, something had quickened 
in him, and while he was murmuring that the earth he 
had scraped up was “just soil,” he had raised it to his lips 
and had kissed it. . . . And as quickly as the impulse to 
kiss the earth came to him, came also revulsion. “That 
was a sloppy thing to do, ’ ’ he said to himself, and he fiung 
the earth away from him. 

He had stayed there until the evening, lulled by the warm 
wind that blew about the mountains, and soothed by the 
soft, kindly smell of burning turf. There was an odour of 
smouldering furze near by, and the air was full of pleas- 


394 


CHANGING WINDS 


ant sounds; the rattle of carts, the call of a man to a dog, 
the whinnying of horses and the deep lowing of cows. 
He turned on his side and looked seawards. The sun had 
set in a great field of golden cloud, throwing splashes of 
light down the sides of the mountains and turning little 
rain-pools into pools of fire ; but now the dusk was settling 
down, and as Henry looked towards the sea, he saw lights 
shining out of the houses, making warm and comforting 
signals in the dark. Dublin lay curled about the Bay, cov- 
ered by smoke that was pierced here and there by the chim- 
ney-stacks of factories. There, beneath him, were little 
rocking lights on the boats and ships that lay in Kings- 
town Harbour or drifted up and down the Irish Sea, and 
over there, across the Bay, the great high hump of Howth 
thrust itself upwards. A tired ship sailed slowly up to the 
city, trailing a long line of white foam behind her. . . . 
He stood up and looked about him; and again the love of 
Ireland came into his heart, and this time he did not try 
to check it. He yielded to it, giving himself up to it com- 
pletely. . . . 

“You can’t help it,” he murmured to himself. “You 
simply can’t help it! . . .” 

But he loved England, too. There had been nights when 
he had loved London as a man might love his mother . . . 
when the curve of the Thames, and the dark shine of its 
water against the arches of Waterloo Bridge, and the bulg- 
ing dome of St. Paul’s rising proudly out of the haze and 
smoke, and the view of the little humpy hills at Harrow that 
was seen from the Hampstead Heath . . . when all these 
became like living things that loved him and were loved by 
him. Once, with Gilbert, he had wandered over Romney 
Marsh, from Hythe to Rye, and had felt that Kent and Sus- 
sex were as close to him as Antrim and Down. And Devon- 
shire, from north and south, was friendly and native to 
him. He had tramped about Exmoor and had seen the 
red deer running swiftly from the hunt, and had climbed a 
bare scarp of Dartmoor, startling the wild ponies so that 


CHANGING WINDS 


395 


they ran off with their long tails flying in the air, scat- 
tering the flocks of sheep in their flight. The very names of 
the Devonshire rivers were like homely music to him, and 
he would say the names over to himself for the pleasure of 
their sound : Taw and Tamar and Torridge, the Teign and 
the Dart and the Exe, and the rivers about Boveyhayne, 
the Sid and the Otter, the Coly, the Axe and the 
Yarty. . . . 

‘H’m not de-nationalised, ’ ’ he insisted. love Ireland 
and England. I’m part of them and they are part of me, 
and we shall never be separate. ...” 

10 

He had stayed at Ballymartin until he had completed 
“The Wayward Man.” His father’s health had varied 
greatly, but soon after the publication of the new novel, 
it mended and, although he did not recover his old strength 
and vigour, he was well enough to move about and superin- 
tend the work on his farm. 

“You can go back to London now, Henry!” he said to 
his son one morning, after breakfast. “I know you’re 
just itchin’ to get back there, an’ I’m sure I’m sick, sore 
an’ tired of the sight of you. Away off with you, now!” 
And Henry, protesting that he did not wish to go, had 
gone to London. Gilbert’s second comedy, “Sylvia,” had 
been produced by Sir Geoffrey Mundane and, like “The 
Magic Casement,” had achieved a fair amount of success. 
“But I haven’t done anything big yet,” Gilbert com- 
plained to Henry. “My aim’s better than it was, but I’m 
still missing the point. Perhaps the next one will hit 
it. . . .” 

In London, Henry began “The Fennels,” but after he 
had written a couple of chapters, he found himself unable 
to proceed with it. 

“I must go back to Ireland,” he said to Gilbert. “I 
want the feel of Ulster. I can’t get it into this book unless 


396 


CHANGING WINDS 


I ’m there, somehow ! ’ ’ And so, sooner than he had antici- 
pated, he returned to Ballymartin, where “The Fennels” 
was finished, and there he stayed until Gilbert wrote and 
asked him to join him at Tre^Arrdur Bay. 

“You canT get much nearer to Ireland than that,” 
he wrote: “You hop into the boat at Kingstown and hop 
out of it again at Holyhead and there you are ! . . . ” 

“I shall be back again in a month, father!” he had 
said to Mr. Quinn, and then he had taken train to Bel- 
fast, where he was to change for Dublin and thence go to 
Wales. 

In Belfast, there was great excitement because the Ulster 
Volunteers had successfully landed a cargo of guns that 
were purchased in Germany. The Volunteers had seized 
the coastguard stations at Larne and at Donaghadee and 
Bangor, overawing the police, and there had been much 
jocularity. It was all done in excellent taste. Had it not 
been for the death of a coastguard through heart failure, 
there would have been nothing to mar the jolly entertain- 
ment. . . . 


11 

“I suppose John Marsh was sick about the gun-running 
in Ulster?” said Gilbert to Henry, as they approached the 
hotel at Tre’Arrdur Bay at which they were to stay. 

“No, I donT think so. He seemed to think it was rather 
fine of the Ulstermen to do it. You see, iUs put the Gov- 
ernment in a hole, and that pleases him. He was very 
mysterious in his talk, and full of hints! ...” 

‘ ‘ Are they going to run guns, too ? ” Gilbert asked. 

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Henry. “One of 
these days a gun’ll go off, and then they’ll stop playing 
the fool, I suppose!” 


THE THIRD CHAPTER 


1 

“ Roger getting all his facts in fine trim for the book 
on a National Army/’ Gilbert said after lunch. “The 
thing’s been much bigger than any of us imagined, but 
Roger’s a sticker, and he’s got a lot done!” 

“I’d nearly forgotten about that business,” Henry re- 
plied. 

“Roger hasn’t forgotten. He’s been spending a great 
deal of time in Bermondsey lately, and I shouldn’t be 
surprised if the local Tories adopt him as their candidate 
at the next election. I don’t suppose he’ll get in. It’ll 
be a pity if he doesn’t. Rachel’s making it easier for him. 
Roger says she’s popular with the girls in the jam fac- 
tories . . . and of course that’s very useful. You see, 
Rachel tells the girls to tell their mothers to tell their 
fathers to vote for Roger when the time comes, and the 
fathers’ll have to do it or they’ll get a hell of a time 
from their women. I can tell you, Quinny, Rachel knows 
what’s what. She’s going to ask some of the jam-girls 
out to tea and show them the baby! ...” 

“Good old British Slop, Gilbert! Do you remember 
how we swore that we would never have anything to do 
with Slop? . . .” 

“We’ve had a lot to do with it. Roger was right. The 
Slop is there and you’ve got to make allowances for it, and 
after all, why shouldn’t Rachel show her baby to the 
girls? Damn it all, a baby is a remarkable thing, when 
you come to think of it. All that wriggle and bubble and 
squeak and kick . . . and Lord only knows what’ll come 

397 


398 


CHANGING WINDS 


out of it! We ought to get married, Quinny, and father 
a few brats. My own notion is to get hold of a nice, 
large, healthy female of the working-class and set her up 
in a very ugly house in a very ugly suburb, near a mu- 
nicipal park, and give her three pounds a week for herself, 
and an allowance for every child she produces. I could 
have all the pride and pleasure of parenthood without 
the boredom and nuisance of being a husband, and the 
youngsters would probably be young giants. The girl 
wouldn’t mind how many she had, and she’d feed ’em 
herself. There ’d be no damned bottle and no damned lim- 
itation. And I’d put all the boys in the Navy, and I’d 
make cooks out of the girls . . . coohs, Quinny, not food- 
murderers, and I’d call the first boy Michael John, and 
the second boy Patrick James and the third boy Peter 
William and the fourth boy Roger Henry Gilbert Ni- 
nian. ...” 

^‘And what would you call the girls?” 

‘‘Wait a minute! I haven’t done with the boys yet. 
And I ’d call the fifth boy Matthew. I ’d call the first girl 
Margaret, and the second girl Bridget, and the third girl 
Rachel, and the fourth girl Mary, and I’m damned if I 
know what I’d call the fifth girl, so I’d let her mother 
choose her name. And they’d all know how to swim, and 
manage a boat, and box, and whistle with two fingers in 
their mouths, and the girls’ chief ambition would be to 
get married and have babies. They’d have a competition 
to see who could have the most. And their husbands would 
all be big, hearty men. Margaret would marry a black- 
smith, and Bridget ’ud marry a fisherman, and Rachel ’ud 
marry a farmer, and Mary’d marry a soldier and the 
other one would marry a sailor. Mary’s man ’ud be a 
sergeant-major, a fat sergeant-major, and the other one’s 
’ud be a boatswain or a chief gunner. I’d have so 
many grandchildren that I’d never be able to remember 
which were mine and which belonged to the man next 
door! . . .” 


CHANGING WINDS 


399 


“You’d want a great deal of money for that lot, Gil- 
bert ! ’ ’ 

“I suppose I would. But I think that men of quality 
ought to have children by strong, healthy women of the 
working-class. I think there’s a lot to be said for the 
right of the lord, don’t you? It was good for the race . . . 
kept up the quality of the breed! I shall have to think 
seriously about this. ...” 

“You’d better look out for a farmer’s daughter while 
you’re here,” Henry suggested. 

“What! A Welshwoman! Good God, no!! My good- 
ness, Quinny, you ought to bring that fellow, John Marsh, 
to Wales for a few months. That ’ud cure him of his 
Slop about nationality. I came to Wales, determined to 
like the Welsh, and I’ve failed. That’s all. I’ve failed 
hopelessly. I told myself that it was absurd to believe that 
a whole nation could be as bad as English people say the 
Welsh are . . . but it isn’t absurd ... of the Welsh 
anyhow. They’re all that everybody says they are, only 
about ten times worse. I’ve been all over this country 
one time and another, and they’re simply . . . mean. 
They’re a dying race, thank heaven! They’ve kept them- 
selves to themselves so much that their blood is like water, 
and so they’re simply perishing. They wouldn’t absorb 
or be absorbed . . . and so they’re just dying out. Your 
lot were wiser than the Welsh, Quinny!” 

“The Irish?” 

“Yes. They absorbed all the new blood they could get 
into their veins, and so, whoever else may perish, the 
Irish won’t. This nationality business is all my eye, 
Quinny. You don’t want one strain in a country. You 
want hundreds of strains. You want to mingle the bloods. 
. . . I don’t believe there’s a pure-blooded Irishman in 
Ireland or out of it. . . . Oh, the Welsh! Oh, the awful 
Welsh ! Inbreeding in a nation is the very devil . . . and 
it makes ’em so damned uncivil. Oh, a shifty, whining 
race, the Welsh! ...” 


400 


CHANGING WINDS 


2 

There are many bays on that coast, and in one of these, 
where they could easily get to deep water, they bathed 
every morning, drying themselves in the sun when they 
were tired of swimming. They would haul themselves out 
of the sea by clutching at the long tassels of sea-weed, and 
then lie down on the bare, warm rocks while the sun dried 
the salt into their skins. Once, while they were lying in 
this fashion, Gilbert turned to Henry and said, “Have you 
been to Boveyhayne at all since Ninian went away?’’ 

“No,” Henry answered. “I was to have gone with you 
that Christmas, but my father’s illness prevented me, and 
I haven’t been since.” 

“Why don’t you go? They’d be glad to see you, and 
Ninian ’d like it.” 

“I must go one of these days. How is Mrs. Graham? 
I suppose you’ve seen her lately?” 

“She was all right when I saw her. Mary’s rather 
nice ! ’ ’ 

Henry did not say anything, and Gilbert, having waited 
for a while, went on. 

“I always thought you and Mary. ...” 

He broke off suddenly and sat up. “It’s getting a bit 
chilly,” he said. “I think I’ll dress!” 

“There’s no hurry, Gilbert,” Henry answered. “You 
didn’t finish what you were saying.” 

“It’s none of my business. I’ve no right to. . . .” 

“Oh, yes, you have, Gilbert,” Henry interrupted, sitting 
up too. “Go on!” 

“Well, I always thought that you and Mary were . . . 
well, liked each other. That was why I was so puzzled 
when you got fond of Cecily. I felt certain that you’d 
marry Mary. Why don’t you, Quinny? She’s an awfully 
nice girl, and you and she are rather good pals, aren’t 
you ? ’ ’ 

“I don’t know, Gilbert. I think I love Mary better 


CHANGING WINDS 


401 


than any one IVe ever met, and yet I seem to lose touch 
with her very easily!’^ 

“Oh, I shouldn’t count Cecily. Cecily is anybody’s 
sweetheart! ...” 

“But it wasn’t only Cecily. There was a girl ... a 
farm-girl in Antrim. I never told you about her. Her 
name was Sheila Morgan . . . she’s married now . . . and 
I went straight from Mary to her. Of course, I was a kid 
then, but still I’d told Mary I was fond of her, and we’d 
arranged to get married when we grew up . . . and then 
I went home and made love to Sheila Morgan!” 

‘ ‘ None of these women held you, Quinny ! ’ ’ said Gilbert. 

“No, that’s true, and Mary has, although I seldom see 
her. I thought that I could never love anybody as I 
loved Sheila Morgan . . . until I met Cecily . . . and 
then I thought I should never love any one as I loved her 
. . . but somehow Cecily doesn’t hold me now, and Mary 
does. I can’t tell you when I ceased to love Cecily . . . 
I don’t really know that I have ceased to love her ... it 
just weakened, so gradually that I did not notice it weak- 
ening. All the same, if I were to see Cecily now, I should 
probably want her as badly as ever.” 

“You might, Quinny, but you wouldn’t go on wanting 
her. You see, she wouldn’t want you for very long, and 
my general opinion is that you can’t keep on giving if you 
get nothing in return . . . unless, of course, you’re a one- 
eyed ass. A healthy, intelligent man, if he loves a woman 
who doesn’t love him . . . well he goes off and loves some 
one else . . . and quite right, too. These devoted fellows 
who cherish their blighted affections forever . . . damn it, 
they deserve it. They’ve got no imagination! I don’t 
think Cecily ’d hold you now, Quinny, not for very long 
anyhow. I wish you’d marry Mary. You quite obviously 
love her, and she quite obviously loves you. . . . Oh, Lordy 
God, I wish I could love somebody. I wish I were a young 
man in a novelette, with a nice, clear-cut face and crisp, 
curly hair and frightfully gentlemanly ways and no brains 


402 


CHANGING WINDS 


so that I could get into the most idiotic messes. . . . Why 
aren^t there any aphrodisiacs for men who cannot love 
any one in particular, Quinny ! If you ’d had the sense to 
have a sister, I should probably have married her. Roger’s 
family runs to nothing but males, and Rachel can’t hon- 
estly recommend any of her female relatives to me. If I 
thought Mary’d have me, I’d marry her, but I know she 
wouldn’t. I used to think it was awful to want to believe 
in God and not be able to believe in Him, but it’s a lot 
worse to want to love and not be able to love. I shall have 
to marry an actress. That’s all!” 

They dressed in the shelter of the rocks, and then went 
back to the hotel to lunch. 

“I’d like to marry Mary! ...” Henry began. 

“Why don’t you, then?” Gilbert interrupted. 

“Because I feel that I must go to her absolutely un- 
divided, Gilbert. Do you know what I mean? I want to 
be able to go to her, knowing that no other woman can 
sway me from her for a second. It would be horrible to 
be married to her and feel something lurking inside me, 
just waiting for a chance to spring out and . . . and make 
love to some one else!” 

“You’ve changed a lot, Quinny, since the days when 
you pleaded for infinite variety. You wanted a wife for 
every mood! ...” 

Henry laughed. “We did talk a lot of rot when we 
first went to London,” he said, putting his arm in Gil- 
bert’s. 

“It wasn’t all rot. My contributions to the discussion 
were very sensible. I wonder what’s the excitement up 
there! The papers are in! . . .” 

There was a group of visitors sitting on the seats in 
front of the hotel and they were reading the newspapers 
which had just been sent out from B^olyhead. 

“Let’s go and ask,” Henry exclaimed, and they both 
went on more quickly. 


CHANGING WINDS 


403 


‘‘Any newsT’ Gilbert shouted as they mounted the steps 
leading from the carriage-way to the terrace. 

“Yes. Bad news from Ireland/^ a visitor answered. 

“From Ireland!” Henry said. 

“Yes. The Nationalists landed some guns at 
Howth! . . .” 

“Yes, yes!” Henry said excitedly. 

“And there was a scrap between the people and sol- 
diers! . . .” 

“The soldiers!” 

The visitor nodded his head. “Some damned ass,” he 
said, “had ordered the soldiers out, and . . . well, there 
was a row. The crowd stoned the soldiers . . . and sol- 
diers are human like anybody else . , . they fired on the 
crowd! . . .” 

“Fired on them?” 

“Yes. Several people were killed. It’s a bad business, 
a damned bad business! ...” 

3 

There was an unreasonable fury in Henry’s heart. “It’s 
a clever joke when the Ulster people do it,” he said, rag- 
ing at Gilbert. “And everybody agrees to look the other 
way, but it’s a crime when the Nationalists do it, and it 
can only be punished by ... by shooting. I suppose it’s 
absolutely impossible for the English to get any under- 
standing into their thick heads! ...” 

“Don’t be an old ass, Henry. You’re not going to im- 
prove a rotten bad business by hitting about indiscrim- 
inately. I daresay the people who were responsible for the 
thing were Irishmen. I’ve always noticed that when any- 
thing really dirty is done in Ireland, it’s an Irishman who 
does it. . . .” 

“A rotten Unionist! ...” 

“Irish, all the same! The only thing that you Irish 


404 


CHANGING WINDS 


are united about is your habit of blaming the English for 
your own faults and misbehaviour. If I had the fellow 
who was responsible for this business I’d shoot him out of 
hand. I wouldn’t think twice about it. If a man is such 
an ass as all that, he ought to be put out of the world 
quick. But then I’m English. The Irish ’ll make a case out 
of him. They’ll orate over him, and they’ll get fright- 
fully cross for a fortnight, and then they’ll do nothing. 
You know as well as I do, Quinny, that the English aren’t 
unfriendly to the Irish, that they really are anxious to do 
the decent thing by Ireland. It isn’t us: it’s you. We’re 
not against you . . . you’re against yourselves. There are 
about seventy-five different parties in Ireland, aren’t there, 
and they all hate each other like poison?” 

“I wonder if John Marsh was hurt! ...” 

“I don’t suppose so. There ’d have been some refer- 
ence to him in the paper if he’d been hurt.” 

“This was what he was hinting at when I saw him in 
Dublin,” Henry went on. “He talked about ‘doubling 
it’ and said that two could play at that game!” 

He was calmer now, and able to talk about the Dublin 
shooting with some discrimination. 

“I don’t know why they want to ‘run’ guns at all,” he 
said. “The tit-for-tat style of politics seems a fairly fool- 
ish one. ... I think I shall go back to Ireland to-morrow, 
Gilbert. I feel as if I ought to be there. This business 
won’t end where it is now. I know what John Marsh and 
Galway and Mineely are like. Whatever bitterness was in 
them before will be increased enormously by this. Mi- 
neely ’s an Ulsterman, and he’ll make somebody pay for 
this. He doesn’t say much ... he’s like Connolly . . . 
Connolly’s the brains behind Larkin . . . but he keeps 
things inside him, deep down, but safe, so that he can 
always get at them when he wants them!” 

“What sort of man is he, Quinny?” Gilbert asked. “I 
didn’t see him when we were in Dublin.” 

“He looks like a comfortable tradesman, and he’s a 


CHANGING WINDS 


405 


kindly sort of chap. You’d never dream that he was an 
agitator or that he’d want to lead a rebellion. I don’t 
believe he likes that work, either. I think that inside him 
his chief desire is for a decent house with a garden, where 
he can grow sweet peas and cabbages and sit in the evening 
with his wife and children. He has more balanced knowl- 
edge than most of the people he works with. Marsh and 
Galway have had a better education than Mineely, but they 
haven’t had his experience or his knowledge of men, and 
so they can’t check their enthusiasm. He was in America 
for a long while, and he’s lived in England, too. He wrote 
a quite good book on the Irish Labour Movement that would 
have been better if he’d made more allowance for the 
nature of the times. If the employers hadn’t behaved so 
brutally over the strike, Mineely might have become the 
solvent of a lot of ill-will in Ireland ; but they made a bit- 
ter man out of him then, and I suppose it’s too late now. 
He’ll go on, getting more and more bitter until. ... Do 
you remember that story by H. G. Wells, Gilbert, called 
Hn the Days of the Comet’?” 

‘Ms that the green vapour story?” 

^‘Yes. Well, we want a green vapour very badly in 
Ireland, something to obliterate every memory and leave 
us all with fresh minds!” 

‘^Miracle-mongering won’t lead you very far, Quinny. 
It’s no good howling for a vapour to heal you. You’ve 
just got to take your blooming memories and cure ’em your- 
selves, by the sweat of your brows! And, look here, 
Quinny, there doesn’t seem any good reason why you 
should dash back to Ireland because of this business. I 
always think that the worst row in the world would never 
have come to anything if people hadn’t done what you 
propose to do, rushed into it just because they thought 
they ought to be there. They congest things . . . they 
use up the air and make the place feel stuffy . . . and then 
they get cross, and somebody shoves somebody else, and 
before they know where they are, they’re splitting each 


406 


CHANGING WINDS 


other’s skulls. If they’d only remained dispersed. . . 

‘‘But I’d like to be there! . . 

“I know you would. We’d all like to be there, so’s 
we could say afterwards we’d seen the whole thing from 
beginning to end. That’s just why we shouldn’t be there. 
It isn’t the principals in the row that make all the trouble, 
Quinny ... it’s the blooming spectators! ...” 

4 

He let himself be persuaded by Gilbert to stay in Wales, 
and they spent the next two or three days in tramping 
about the island of Anglesey. The days were bright and 
sunny, and the rich sparkle of the sea tempted them fre- 
quently to the water. There were many visitors at the 
hotel, some of whom were Irish people from Dublin, but 
mostly they came from Liverpool and Manchester; and 
with several of them, Gilbert and Henry became friendly. 
There was a schoolmaster who made a profession of moun- 
tain-climbing and a hobby of religion; and a doctor who 
told comic stories and talked with good temper about Home 
Rule, to which he was opposed; and a splendid old man, 
with his wife, who was interested in co-operation and was 
eager to limit armaments; and a wine merchant from 
Liverpool who had come to the conclusion that the world, 
on the whole, was quite a decent place to live in; and a 
dreadful little stockbroker who belonged to the Bloody 
school of politicians and talked about the Empire as if 
it were a music-hall ; and an agent of some sort from Man- 
chester who had reached that stage of prosperity at which 
he was beginning to wonder whether, after all. Noncon- 
formity was not a grievous heresy and the Church of Eng- 
land a sure means of salvation. And there were others, 
vague people of the middle class, kindly and comfortable 
and inarticulate, with no particular opinions on anything 
except the desirability of four good meals every day and 
a month’s holiday in the summer. There were daughters. 


CHANGING WINDS 


407 


too ... all sorts and conditions of daughters ! Some that 
were hearty and athletic, living either in the sea or on the 
golf-links; and others that were full of their sex, unable 
to forget that men are men and women are women, and 
never the two shall come together but there shall be woo- 
ing and marrying. . . . There were a few who were eager 
to use their minds . . . and they quoted their parents and 
the morning papers to Gilbert and Henry. ... 

Surprisingly, their feeling about the Howth gun-raid 
became cool. In that exquisite sunlight, beneath the wide 
reach of blue sky, it was impossible to experience rancour 
or maintain anger. They swam and basked and swam 
again, and let their eyes look gladly on young shapely 
girls, running across the grassy tops of the piled rocks, 
and were sure that there could be nothing on earth more 
beautiful than the spectacle of pink arms gleaming through 
white muslin, unless it might be the full brown ears of 
wheat now bending in the ripening rays of sunshine. . . . 
And again, after dinner, they would sit in a high, grassy 
corner of the bay, listening to the lap of the sea beneath 
them, while the stars threw their faint reflections on the 
returning tide. . . . 

Exquisite peace and quiet, long days of rich pleasure 
and sweet nights of rest, kindliness and laughter and the 
friendly word of casual acquaintances . . . and over all, 
the enduring beauty of this world. 


THE FOURTH CHAPTER 


1 * 

Gilbert looked up from the paper as Henry came out of 
the hotel. 

“I say, Quinny,’’ he said, “I think there ^s going to he 
a war!’’ 

“A what?” Henry exclaimed. 

^‘A war! . . .” 

“But where?” 

Henry sat down on the long seat beside Gilbert, and 
looked over his shoulder at the paper. 

“All over the place!” Gilbert answered. “The Aus- 
trians want to have a go at the Serbians, and the Rus- 
sians mean to have one at the Austrians, and then the 
Germans will have to help the Austrians, and that’ll bring 
the French in, and . . . and then I suppose we shall shove 
in somewhere!” 

Henry took the paper from Gilbert’s hands. “But what 
have we got to do with it?” he said, hastily scanning the 
telegrams with which the news columns were filled. 

“I dunno! . . 

“It’s ridiculous. . . . What’s there to fight about? 
Damn it all, my novel’s coming out in a month! What’s 
it about?” 

“You remember that Archduke chap who got blown up 
the other day! ...” 

“Yes, I remember!” 

“Well, that’s what it’s about!” 

“But, good God, man, they can’t have a war about a 
thing like that. ...” 


408 


CHANGING WINDS 


409 


‘‘It looks as if they thought they could. Anyhow, 
they^re going to try!^’ said Gilbert. 

“Just because an Archduke got killed! Damn it, Gil- 
bert, that’s what they’re for! ...” 

There was a queer look of fright in the faces of the 
visitors to the hotel. The boy from Holyhead had been 
slow in coming with the papers, and the first news that 
came to them came from a man who had been into the 
town that morning. 

“There’s going to be a war,” he had shouted to the 
group of people sitting on the terrace. 

“Don’t be an ass!” they had shouted back at him. 

“Yes, there is. The whole blooming world’ll be scrap- 
ping presently!” He spoke with the queer gaiety of a 
man who has abandoned all hope. “Just as I was getting 
on my feet, too!” he went on. He suddenly unburdened 
himself to a man who had only arrived at the hotel late 
on the previous evening . . . they had never seen each 
other before . . . but now they were revealing inti- 
macies. . . . 

“Just getting on my feet,” the man who had brought 
the news went on. 

“It’ll be very bad for business, I’m afraid! ...” 

“Bad. Goo’ Lor’, man, it’s ruin . . . absolute ruin! 
I ’ll be up the pole, that ’s where I ’ll be. And I was think- 
ing of getting married, too. Just thinking of it, you know 
. . . nothing settled or anything . . . and now . . . damn 
it, what they want to go and have a war for? We don’t 
want one!” 

Then the boy with the newspapers appeared, and they 
rushed at him and tore the papers from his bag. . . . 

“By Jove!” they said, “it’s . . . it’s true!” 

“I told you it was true. You wouldn’t believe me when 
I told you. You know, it’s a Bit Thick, that’s what it is. 
I’ve been a Liberal all my life, same as my father . . . 
and then this goes and happens! What is a chap to 
do? . . 


410 


CHANGING WINDS 


He wailed away, filling the air with prophecies of doom 
and disaster. They could hear him, as he rushed about 
the hotel telling the news, taking people into corners and 
informing them that it was a Bit Thick. There was some- 
thing pitiful about him ... he had climbed to a com- 
fortable competence from a hard beginning . . . and some- 
thing comical, too, something that made them all wish to 
laugh. The veneer of manners which he had acquired 
with so much trouble had worn off in a moment, and the 
careful speech, the rigid insistence on aspirates, so to 
speak, took to its heels. He appeared to them suddenly, 
carrying an atlas. 

Where the ’ell is Serbia anyway?” he demanded. “I 
can’t find the damn place on the map!” 

2 

They stood about, gaping at each other, unable to realise 
what had happened to them. One of the windows of the 
drawing-room was open, and the subdued buzz of women’s 
voices came through it to the terrace. Monotonously, ex- 
asperatingly, one querulous voice sent a fretful question 
through the bewildered speeches of the women . . . “But 
what’s it about? That’s what I want to know. I’ve asked 
everybody, but nobody seems to know!” Some one made 
an inaudible reply to the querulous voice, and then it went 
on: “Serbia! That’s what some one else said, but we 
aren’t Serbia. We’re England, and I don’t see what we’ve 
got to do with it. If they want to go and fight, let them. 
That’s what I say! ...” 

Gilbert and Henry sat in the middle of the group on 
the terrace, listening to what was being said about them. 
They had thrown the newspapers aside . . . there was 
hysteria in the headlines . . . and were sitting in a sort 
of stupor, wondering what would happen next. The buzz- 
ing voice, demanding to be told what the war was about. 


CHANGING WINDS 


411 


still droned through the window, irritating them vaguely 
until the man who had first brought the news got up from 
his seat, and went to the window and shut it noisily. 

‘‘Damn ’er,^’ he said, as he came back to his seat. “ ^Oo 
cares whether she knows what it’s about or not! What’s 
it got to do with ’er any’ow. She won’t ’ave to do none 
of the fightin’!” 

Fighting ! 

Henry sat up and looked at the man. Why, of course, 
there would be fighting . . . and perhaps England would 
be drawn into the war, and then! . . . 

A girl came out of the hotel, with towels under her arm, 
and called to them. “Coming to bathe?” she said. 

They looked at her vacantly. “Bathe!” said Henry. 

“Yes. It’s a ripping morning!” 

They stood up, and looked towards the sea that was 
white with sunshine . . . and then turned away again. It 
seemed to Henry as if, down there by the rocks, in a 
splash of sunlight, a corpse were lying . . . festering. . . . 
He sat down again, mechanically picking up a newspaper 
and reading once more the telegrams he had already read 
many times. 

“Come along,” the girl said. “You might just as well 
bathe!” 

Gilbert looked up at her and smiled. “I was just won- 
dering,” he said, “what one ought to do!” 

3 

The banks had closed, and there was an alarm about 
money and a deeper alarm about food. . . . Peinic sud- 
denly came upon them, and in a short while, visitors began 
to pack their trunks in their eagerness to get home. The 
women felt that they would be safer at home . . . they 
wanted to be in familiar places. “I really ought to be at 
home to look after my house,” a man said to Henry. 


412 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘ ‘ They ’re a rough lot in our town, and if there ’s any short- 
age of food . . . they’ll loot, of course! I don’t like 
breaking my holiday, but! ...” 

He did not complete his sentence ... no one ever com- 
pleted a sentence then . . . but went indoors. . . . 

And telegrams came incessantly, telegrams calling people 
home, telegrams announcing that others were not coming, 
telegrams containing information of the war. . . . 

“I suppose,” said Gilbert, “if anything comes of this, 
we’ll have to do something! ...” 

“Do something?” Henry murmured. 

“Yes, I suppose so. . . .” 

Perkins came to him, Perkins who had an agency in Man- 
chester. 

“You know,” he said, “I don’t call this place safe. It’s 
right on the coast . . . slap-up against the sea . . . and 
you know, if a German cruiser was to drop a shell right in 
the middle of us, we ’d look damn silly, I can tell you ! ’ ’ 

“We have a navy too,” said Gilbert. 

“Yes, I know all about that, but that wouldn’t be much 
consolation to me if I was to get blown up, would it? You 
know, I do think they ought to draw the blinds down at 
night so’s the light won’t show out at sea. I mean to say, 
there ’s no sense in running risks, is there ? ’ ’ 

“No . . . no, of course not!” 

“I think I’ll go and suggest that to the proprietor. I’ve 
just been up to Manchester to see how things are going on 
there. Bit excited, of course. Nobody seems to know what 
to do, so they just sit down and cancel everything. Silly, 
I call it. I went to my office to get my letters, and every 
blessed one was cancelling an order. I mean to say, that’s 
no way to go on . . . losing their heads like that. And 
you know they’ll need my stuff later on . . . if we go in !” 

“Your stuff?” Henry said. 

“Yes. I deal in black ! . . .” 

“Christ!” said Gilbert, getting up and walking away. 


CHANGING WINDS 


413 


‘‘Your friend seems a bit upset, doesn’t he?” Mr. Per- 
kins murmured to Henry. 


4 

They went into Holyhead, and wandered aimlessly about 
the station. Marvellously, men in uniform appeared 
everywhere. The reservists, naval and military, had been 
called up, and while Gilbert and Henry stood in the station, 
a large number of them went away, leaving tearful, puz- 
zled women on the platform. That morning the boots at 
the hotel had been called up to join his Territorial regi- 
ment. He had been carrying a trunk on his back, when 
the call came to him, and, chuckling, he dropped the trunk, 
and skipped off to get ready. “I’m wanted,” he said . . . 
and then he went off. 

And still people went about, bemused and frightened, 
demanding what it was about. . . . 

“We’ll have to go in,” some one said in the station. “I 
can’t see how we can stay out! ...” 

‘ ‘ I can ’t see that at all, ’ ’ his neighbour replied. “ We ’ve 
got nothing to do with it!” 

“If the Germans won’t leave the Belgians alone! . . .” 

Perkins interrupted again. “We’ve got a Belgian cook 
in our hotel,” he said. “It . . . it sort of brings it all 
home to you, that!” 

There were rumours that the working-people were reso- 
lute against the war. . . . 

“ And so are the employers,” said Perkins. “I can tell 
you that. I ’ve not met anybody yet who wants a war ! ’ ’ 

And as the rumours flew about, they grew. One could 
see a rumour begin and swell and change and increase. 

‘ ‘ I tell you what, ’ ’ said Perkins. ‘ ‘ These Germans have 
been damn well asking for it, and I hope they’ll damn well 
get it. I know a few Germans . . . Manchester’s full of 
’em . . . and I don’t like ’em. As a nation, I don’t like 


414 * 


CHANGING WINDS 


^em. They . . . they get on my nerves, that’s what they 
do!” 

There was talk about German organisation, German effi- 
ciency, German militarism. . . . 

“They don’t think anything of a civilian in Germany. 
The soldier’s everything. And women ... oh, my God, 
the way they treat women ! I ’ve seen German officers . . . 
I’ve seen ’em myself . . . chaps that are supposed to be 
gentlemen . . . going along the street, and shoving women 
off the pavement ! . . . ” 

“You know,” said Perkins, “I don’t really think much 
of the Germans myself. I mean to say, they got no initia- 
tive. That’s what’s the matter with ’em. Do you know 
what a German does when he wants to go across the street ? 
He goes up to a policeman and asks him. And what does 
the policeman do ? Shoves him off the pavement ! . . . I ’d 
break his jaw for him if he shoved me 1” 

They stayed on, wondering sometimes why they stayed, 
and then at midnight, a troop train steamed into the sta- 
tion, and a crowd of tired soldiers alighted from the car- 
riages and prepared to embark. 

“My God, it’s begun!” said Perkins. “Where you 
chaps going to ? ” he asked of a soldier. 

“I dunno,!’ the soldier answered. “Ireland, I think. 
I ’eard we was goin’ to put down these Weedin’ Orangemen 
that’s bin makin’ so much fuss lately, but some’ow I don’t 
think that’s it. ’Ere, mate,” he added, thrusting a dirty 
envelope into Perkins’s hand. “That’s my wife’s address. 
I ’adn’t time to write to ’er . . . we was sent off in a 
’urry . . . you might just drop ’er a line, will you an’ 
say I’m off! . . 

“Right you are,” said Perkins. 

“Tell ’er I think I’m off to France, see, on’y I don’t 
know, see! There’s a rumour we’re goin’ to Ireland, but 
I don’t think so. You better tell ’er that. An’ I’m all 
right, see. So far any’ow! ...” 

‘ ‘ God ! ’ ’ said Perkins, as the soldiers moved towards the 


CHANGING WINDS 415 

transport, ‘‘don’t it make you feel as if you wanted to 
cry! . . 

In the morning, they knew that England had declared 
war on Germany. 

“Of course,” said Gilbert, “we couldn’t keep out of it. 
We simply had to go in!” 

They had gone down to the bay to bathe. “This’ll be 
my last,” Gilbert muttered as they stripped, “for a while 
anyhow!” 

“But you’re not going yet,” Henry said. 

“I think so,” Gilbert replied. “I don’t know how the 
trains are running, but I shall try to get back to London 
to-night.” 

“But why? . . .” 

“Oh, I expect they’ll need chaps. Don’t you think they 
will?” 

“Do you mean you’re going to . . . enlist?” 

“Yes. That seems the obvious thing to do. They’re 
sure to need people,” Gilbert answered. 

‘ ‘ I suppose so, ’ ’ said Henry. 

“I don’t quite fancy myself as a soldier, Quinny. I’m 
not what you’d call a bellicose chap. I shan’t enjoy it 
very much, and I expect I shall be damned scared when it 
comes to ... to charging and that sort of thing . . . but 
a chap must do his share. ...” 

“I suppose so,” Henry said again. 

It seemed to him to be utterly absurd that Gilbert should 
become a soldier, that his sensitive mind should be diverted 
from its proper functions to the bloody business of war. 

“I’ve always jibbed a bit when I heard people talking 
about England in the way that awful stockbroker in the 
hotel talks about it,” Gilbert was saying, “and I loathe 
the Kipling flag-flapper, all bounce and brag and bloodies 
. . . but I feel fond of England to-day, Quinny, and noth- 
ing else seems to matter much. And anyhow flghting’s 
such a filthy job that it ought to be shared by everybody 
that can take a hand in it at all. It doesn’t seem right 


416 


CHANGING WINDS 


somehow to do your fighting by proxy. I should hate to 
think that I let some one else save my skin when I’m per- 
fectly able to save it myself. ...” 

“But you’ve other work to do, Gilbert, more important 
work than that. There are plenty of people to do that job, 
but there aren’t many people to do yours. Supposing you 
went out and . . . and got . . . killed? ...” 

“There’s that risk, of course,” said Gilbert, “but after 
all, I don’t know that my life is of greater value than an- 
other man’s. A clerk’s life is of as much consequence to 
him as mine is to me.” 

‘ ‘ I daresay it is, Gilbert, but is it of as much consequence 
to England? I know it sounds priggish to say that, but 
some lives are of more value than others, and it’s silly to 
pretend that they’re not.” 

“I should have agreed with you about that last week, 
Quinny. You remember my doctrine of aristocracy? . . . 
Well, somehow I don’t feel like that now. I just don’t feel 
like it. Those chaps we saw at Holyhead, going off to 
France ... I shouldn’t like to put my plays against the 
life of any one of them. I couldn’t help thinking last 
night, while I was lying in bed, that there I was, snugly 
tucked up, and out there . . , somewhere! ...” He 
pointed out towards the Irish Sea . . . “those chaps were 
sailing to ... to fight for me. I felt ashamed of my- 
self, and I don’t like to feel ashamed of myself. You saw 
that soldier giving his wife’s address to Perkins? Poor 
devil, he hadn’t had time to say ‘Good-bye’ to her, and 
perhaps he won’t come back. I should feel like a cad if I 
let myself believe that my plays were worth more than 
that man’s life. And anyhow, if I don’t write the plays, 
some one else will. I’ve always believed that if there’s a 
good job to be done in the world, it’ll get done by some- 
body. If this chap fails to do it, it’ll be done by some other 
chap. . . .Will you come into Holyhead with me and en- 
quire about trains ? There ’s a rumour that a whole lot of 


CHANGING WINDS 417 

them have been taken off. They^re shifting troops 
about. . . .^’ 


6 

Gilbert was to travel by the Irish mail the next day. 
He had made up his mind definitely to go to London and 
enlist, and Henry, having failed to dissuade him from his 
decision, resolved to go to London with him. They had 
talked about the war all day, insisting to each other that 
it could not be of long duration. There was a while, dur- 
ing the first two or three days’ fighting, when the Germans 
seemed to have been held by the Belgians, that they had the 
wildest hopes. “If the Belgians can keep them back, what 
will happen when the French and British get at them?” 
But that time of jubilee hope did not last long, and again 
the air was full of rumours of disaster and misfortune. 
The Black Watch had been cut to pieces. . . . 

There was a sense of fear in every heart, not of physical 
cowardice, but of doubt of the stability of things. This 
horrible disaster had been foretold many times, so fre- 
quently, indeed, that it had become a joke, and novelists 
had written horrific accounts of the ills that would swiftly 
follow after the outbreak of hostilities. Credit would dis- 
appear . . . and all that pretence at wealth, the pieces of 
paper and the scrips and shares, would be revealed at last 
as . . . pieces of paper. Silver, even, would be treated with 
contempt, and there would be a scramble for gold. And 
people would begin to hoard things . . . and no one would 
trust any one else. There would be suspicion and fear and 
greed and hate . . . and very swiftly and very surely, 
civilisation would reel and topple and fall to pieces. . . . 
At any moment that might happen. So far, indeed, things 
were still steady . . . calamity had not come so quickly as 
imaginative men had foretold . . . but presently, when the 
slums ... the rich man’s reproach . . . had become hum 


418 


CHANGING WINDS 


grier than they usually were, there would be rioting . . . 
and killing. . . . One began to be frightfully conscious of 
the slums . . . and the rage of desperate, starving people. 
One imagined the obsessing thought in each mind : Here we 
are, eating and drinking and being waited upon . . . and 
perhaps to-morrow! . . . 

But no one, in forecasting the European Disaster, had 
made allowance for the obstinacy of man or taken into ac- 
count the resisting power of human society. As if man, 
having built up this mighty structure of civilisation, would 
let it be flung down in a moment without trying to save 
some of it! As if man, having in pain and bloody sweat 
discovered his soul, would let it get lost without struggling 
to hold and preserve it ! . . . 

Gilbert and Henry came into the drawing-room, where 
the women were whispering to each other. Inexplicably, 
almost unconsciously, their voices had fallen to whispers 
... as if they were in church or a corpse were above in a 
bedroom. . . . Four of the women were playing Bridge, 
but none of them wished to play Bridge; and as Gilbert 
and Henry entered the room, they put down their cards 
and looked round at them. 

“Is there any more news?’^ one of them said, and Gil- 
bert told them of the rumours that had been heard in Holy- 
head. 

“They say the Black Watch have been cut to pieces,^’ 
he said. 

The whispering stopped. . . . They could hear the 
clock’s regular tick-tick. . . . 

“Oh, the poor men . . . the poor men!” an old woman 
said, and her fingers began to twitch. . . . 

Almost mechanically, the Bridge players picked up their 
cards. “It’s your lead, partner!” one of them said, and 
then she threw down her cards, and rising from her chair, 
went swiftly from the room. 

“Oh, the poor men . . . the poor men!” the old woman 
moaned. 


CHANGING WINDS 


419 


7 

They sat on the rocks after tea and while they sat there, 
they saw a great ship sailing up the sea, beautiful and 
proud and swift; and they jumped up and climbed to the 
highest point of the cliff to watch her go by. They knew 
her, for there had been anxiety about her for two days, 
and as they watched her sailing past, they cheered and 
waved their hands although no one on the great vessel could 
see them. A girl came running to them. . . . 

‘‘What is itr’ she said. 

“It’s the Lusitania/^ they answered. “She’s dodged 
them, damn them!” 

‘ ‘ Oh, hurrah 1 ” the girl shouted. ‘ ‘ Hurrah 1 Hurrah I ’ ’ 

8 

And then the strain lifted. The Lusitania had won 
home to safety. The Germans, greedy for this great prize, 
had failed to find her. Civilisation still held good ... if 
the world were to go down in the fight, it would go down 
proudly, hitting hard, hitting until the last. . . . 


THE FIFTH CHAPTER 


1 

It was odd, that journey from Holyhead to London, odd 
and silent; for all the way from Wales to Euston they 
passed but one train. They drove through the long stretch 
of England, past wide and windy fields where the harvest- 
ers were cutting the corn, through the dark towns of the 
Potteries, by the collieries where the wheels still revolved as 
the cages were lowered and raised, and then, plunging into 
the outer areas of London, they drove swiftly up to the 
station. In the evening, they went to Hampstead to see 
Roger and Rachel, and found them reading newspapers. 

“I don’t seem able to do anything else,” said Roger. “I 
buy every edition that comes out. I read the damn things 
over and over, and then I read them again. ...” 

iRachel nodded her head. “So do I,” she said. 

A girl came in, a friend of Rachel, who had been in 
Finland when the war began. She had hurried home by 
Berlin, where she had spent an hour or two, while waiting 
for a train, before England declared war on Germany. . . . 

“What were they like?” Gilbert asked. 

“Wild with excitement. We went to a restaurant to get 
something to eat, and while we were there, the news came 
that Russia was at war with them. . . . My goodness! 
There was a Russian in the room, and they went for him ! 

. . . I had my aunt with me, and I was afraid she’d get 
hurt, so we cleared out as quickly as we could, and when we 
got to the station, we had to fight to get into the train. 
My aunt fainted . . . and they were beastly to us, oh, 
beastly! I tried to get things for her, but they wouldn’t 
give us anything ! They kept on telling us we ’d be shot, 

420 


CHANGING WINDS 


421 


and threatening us! . . . They were frightened, those big 
fat men were frightened. If you’d touched them sud- 
denly, they’d have squealed . . . like panic-stricken rab- 
bits! . . 

They sat and talked and talked, and gloom settled on 
them. What was to be the end of this horrible thing which 
no one had desired, but no one was able to prevent. 

“I believe they all lost their nerve at the last,” Roger 
said, “and they just . . . just let things rip. They call 
it a brain-storm in America. They lost their heads . . . 
and they let things rip. My God, what a thing to have 
happened ! ” 

They sat in silence, full of foreboding, and then the girl 
who had come from Finland went home. 

“It’s all up with the Bar, I suppose!” said Roger, when 
he had let her out. “Whatever else people want to do, they 
won’t want to go to law. Having a youngster makes things 
awkward! . . .” 

“If you should need any money, Roger,” said Gilbert, 
“you might let me know!” 

“And me, Roger!” said Henry. ^ 

“Thanks awfully!” Roger replied. “I won’t forget. 
I’ve got some, of course, and Rachel has a little. I dare- 
say we’ll manage. It can’t last long. A couple of months, 
perhaps! ...” 

“I can’t see how it can last longer. It’s too big, and 
... oh, it can’t last longer!” 

“Kitchener says three years! ...” 

‘ ‘ He wants to be on the safe side, I suppose, but my God, 
three years of ... of that ! . . . ” 

2 

Rachel got up suddenly. “You haven’t seen my baby 
yet,” she said. 

“So we haven’t,” Gilbert exclaimed. “Where is it?” 

“She’s upstairs asleep. You must come quietly! . . .” 


422 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘It’s a girl, then?” said Henry. 

Rachel nodded, and led the way upstairs to the bedroom 
where the baby lay in her cot. 

“Isn’t she a darling?” she said, bending over the child. 

They did not answer, afraid, as men are in the presence 
of a sleeping child, that they might disturb her ; and while 
they stood looking at the cot, Rachel bent closer to her baby, 
and lightly kissed her cheek. 

They moved away on tiptoe. 

“What do you call her?” Henry whispered to Roger, as 
they left the bedroom. 

“Eleanor,” he answered. “That was my mother’s 
name. Jolly little kid, isn’t she?” 

Gilbert turned and went back to the bedroom. Rachel 
was still bending over the baby, and she looked up at him 
wamingly. He went up to the cot and, leaning towards 
Rachel, whispered, “Do you mind if I kiss her, too, Rachel? 
I’m going to enlist to-morrow, and perhaps I won’t get so 
good a chance as this! ...” 

She stood up quickly and put her arms round him. ‘ ‘ Oh, 
Gilbert!” she said, and then she drew him down, so that 
he could kiss the baby easily. 

3 

Henry told Roger of Gilbert’s intention, while Rachel 
and Gilbert were in the bedroom with the baby. 

“Enlist?” said Roger. 

Henry nodded his head. 

“Well, of course! ...” Roger began, and then he 
stopped. “I suppose so,” he said, moving towards the tray 
which Rachel had brought into the room earlier in the even- 
ing. “Whisky?” he said. 

“No, thanl^, Roger!” Henry answered. “He’s going 
down to-morrow!” 

“He’d better wait a few days. There’s been a hell of a 
scrum already to join. Queues and queues of chaps, stand- 


CHANGING WINDS 


423 


ing outside Scotland Yard all day. He^d better wait ’til 
tbe rusli is over. ...” 

‘ ‘ I think he ’d rather like to be in the rush, ’ ’ Henry said. 

Then Rachel came into the room, followed by Gilbert. 

Roger,” she said, ‘‘Gilbert’s going to enlist! ...” 

“So Quinny’s just been telling me. Have a whisky, 
Gilbert?” 

“No, thanks, old chap,” said Gilbert, “but if you have 
a cigarette! ...” 

“I’ll get them,” Rachel exclaimed. 

She brought the box of cigarettes to him, and while he 
was choosing one, she said to Roger, ‘ ‘ I was so excited when 
he told me, that I got up and hugged him!” 

“Good!” said Roger. 


4 

They walked home to Bloomsbury, where they had easily 
obtained rooms, for the sudden withdrawal of Germans and 
Austrians had left Bloomsbury in a state of vacancy. As 
they went down Haverstock Hill towards Chalk Farm, an 
old man lurched against them. 

“All the young chaps,” he mumbled thickly. “Thash 
wot sticks in my gizzard! All the young chaps! Gaw- 
blimey, why don’t they tyke the ole ones! ...” 

“Steady on,” Gilbert exclaimed, catching his arm and 
holding him up. “You’ll fall, if you’re not careful!” 

‘ ‘ Don ’t marrer a damn wherrer I do or not ! ” He reeled 
a little, and Gilbert caught hold of him again. “I woul’n 
be a young chap,” he muttered, “not for . . . not for no- 
think. You . . . you’re a young chap, ain’t you? Yesh 
you are! You needn’t tell me you ain’t! I can see as 
wellsh anythink! You’re a young chap ri’ enough. Well 
. . . well. Gawd, ’elp you, young feller! Thash all I got 
to sy . . . subjec!’ Goo-ni’, gen’lemen!” He staggered 
off the pavement, and went half way across the deserted 
street. Then he turned and looked at them for a few mo- 


424 


CHANGING WINDS 


ments. “Ain’t it a bloody treat, eih he shouted to them. 
Ain’t it a bloody treat?” 

“Drunk,” said Gilbert. 

Henry did not reply, and they walked on through Chalk 
Farm, through Camden Town, into the tangle of mean 
streets by Euston, and then across the Euston Road to 
Bloomsbury. They did not speak to each other until they 
were almost at their destination. 

“It’s awfully quiet,” said Henry, turning and looking 
about him. 

“I don’t see any one,” Gilbert answered, “except that 
old fellow ahead of us! , . .” 

“No!” 

They walked on, and when they came up to the old man, 
who walked slowly, and heavily in the same direction, they 
called “Good-night!” to him. He looked round at them, 
an old, tired, bewildered man, and he made a gesture with 
his hands, a gesture of despair. “Ach, mein freund!” he 
said brokenly, and again he made the suppliant motion 
with his hands. 

“Poor old devil!” Gilbert muttered almost to himself. 

5 

They went to their rooms at once, too tired to talk to 
each other, and Henry, hurriedly undressing, got into bed. 
But he could not sleep. “I suppose I ought to join, too!” 
he said to himself, as he lay on his back, staring at the 
ceiling. “Gilbert and I could go together! ...” 

But what would be the good of that? The war would 
be over quite soon. Even Roger thought it would be over 
in a couple of months, and if that were so, there would be 
no need for him to throw up his work and take to soldier- 
ing. “It’ll be over before Gilbert’s got through his train- 
ing. Long before! ...” 

‘ ‘ Anyhow, I can wait until the rush is over. I might as 
well go on working as stand outside Scotland Yard all day, 


CHANGING WINDS 


425 


waiting to be taken on. ... Or I could apply for a com- 
mission! . . .’’ 

He lay very still, hoping that he would fall asleep soon, 
but sleep would not come to him. He sat up in bed, and 
glanced about the room. 

“I suppose,” he said aloud, “they’re fighting now!” 

He lay down again quickly, thrusting himself well under 
the bedclothes and shut his eyes tightly. “Oh, my God, 
isn’t it horrible?” he groaned. 

He saw again that crowd of hurried soldiers detraining 
at Holyhead, thinking that perhaps they were going to 
Ireland, but not quite sure . . . and he could see them 
stumbling up the gangways of the transport, each man 
heavily accoutred ; and sometimes a man would laugh, and 
sometimes a man would swear . . . and then the ship 
sailed out of the harbour, rounding the pier and the break- 
water, churning the sea into a long white trail of foam as 
she set her course past the South Stack. . . . They could 
see the lights on her masthead diminishing as she went 
further away, and then, as the cold sea wind blew about 
them, they shivered and went home. . . . Now, lying here 
in this stillness, warm and snug, Henry could see those 
soldiers, huddled together on the ship. He could imagine 
them, murmuring to one another, “I say, d’ye think we are 
goin’ to Ireland?” and hear one answering, “You’ll know 
in three hours. We’ll be there theUy if we are!” and 
slowly there would come to each man the knowledge that 
their journey was not to Ireland, but to France, and there 
would be a tightening of the lips, an involuntary move- 
ment here and there and then. . . . “Well, o’ course, we’re 
goin’ to France! ’Oo the ’ell thought we was goin’ any- 
where else ? ’ ’ The ship would carry them swiftly down the 
Irish Sea and across the English Channel . . . and after 
that! ... 

“Some of them may be dead already,” he murmured to 
himself. 

Torn up suddenly from their accustomed life, hurried 


426 


CHANGING WINDS 


through the darkness along the length of England, and 
then, after long, cold nights on the sea, landed in France 
and set to slaying. . . . 

‘ ‘ And they won ’t know what ’s it f or ? ’ ' 

But did that matter? Would it be any better if they 
were aware of the cause of the fight ? One lived in a land 
and loved it. Surely, that was sufficient ? 

In his mind, he could still see the soldiers, but always 
they were moving in the dark. He could see very vividly 
the man who had asked Perkins to write to his wife . . . 
and it seemed to him that he was still demanding of 
passers-by that they should write to her. ‘‘Tell ’er I’m all 
right,” he kept on saying. “So far, anyW! ...” 

He turned over on his side, dragging the clothes about 
his head, and tried to shut out the vision of the soldiers 
marching through the fields of France, but he could not 
shut it out. They still marched, endlessly, ceaselessly 
marched. . . . 


6 

When they got to Scotland Yard, there was a great crowd 
of men waiting to be enlisted. 

“You’d better come again, Gilbert,” Henry said. “You’ll 
have to hang about here all day, and then perhaps you 
won’t be reached!” 

“I think I’ll hang about anyhow,” Gilbert answered. 

He had become queerly quiet since the beginning of the 
War. The old, light-hearted, exaggerated speech had gone 
from him, and when he spoke, his words were abrupt and 
colourless. He took his place at the end of the file of men, 
and as he did so, the man in front of him, a fringe-haired, 
quick-eyed youth with a muffler round his neck, turned and 
greeted him. “ ’Illoa, myte!” he said with the cheery 
friendliness of the East End. “You come too, eih?” 

Gilbert answered, “Yes, I thought I might as well!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


m 


We ’ll ’ave to wyte a ’ell of a time,” the Cockney went 
on. ‘‘Some of ’em’s bin ’ere since six this mornin’. Gaw- 
blimey, you’d think they was givin’ awy prizes. I dunno 
wot the ’ell I come for. I jus’ did, sort of! . . 

Some one standing by, turned to a recruiting sergeant 
and whispered something to him, pointing to the gutter- 
snipes in the queue. 

‘ ‘ Fight 1 ’ ’ said the recuiting sergeant. ‘ ‘ Gawd love you, 
guv ’nor, they’d fight ’ell’s blazes, them chaps would!” 

Henry tried again to induce Gilbert to fall out of the 
queue and wait until there was more likelihood of being 
enlisted quickly, but Gilbert would not be persuaded. 

“You’ll have to get something to eat,” Henry urged. 
“They’ll never get near you until this evening, and if 
you’ve got to fall out to get food, you might as well fall 
out now ! ’ ’ 

“I think I’ll wait,” Gilbert repeated. “Perhaps,” he 
went on, “you’ll get me some sandwiches. Get a lot, will 
you. This chap in front of me doesn’t look as if he’d 
brought anything!” 

“You could get a commission, Gilbert, easily,” Henry 
said. 

“I don’t think I should be much good as an officer, 
Quinny. ... Go and get the sandwiches like a decent 
chap ! ’ ’ 

Henry went away to do as Gilbert had bidden him, and 
after a while, he returned with a big packet of sandwiches 
and apples. 

“I shan’t wait, Gilbert,” he said. “I can’t stand about 
all day. I’ll come back when the rush is over. ...” 

“But why, Quinny?” 

“I’m going to join, too, with you! ...” 

“You’re going to join? . . . That’s awf’lly decent of 
you, Quinny!” 

“Decent! Why? It isn’t any more decent than your 
joining is!” 


428 


CHANGING WINDS 


“P^raps not, but I always think it’s very decent of an 
Irishman to fight for England. If there doesn’t seem any 
chance of my getting in to-day, I’ll come back to tea. 
There’s a fellow here says this is the second day he’s been 
waiting ! ’ ’ 

Henry went away. He walked along the Embankment 
towards Blackfriars, and when he had reached the Temple, 
he turned up one of the steep streets that link the Em- 
bankment to Fleet Street. 

“I’ll go and see Delap,” he said to himself. 

Delap was the editor of a weekly paper for which Henry 
had sometimes written articles. Delap, however, was not 
at the office, but Bundy, the manager of the paper, who was 
also the financier, was there. 

“It’s all up with us,” said Bundy. “We’re closing 
down next week!” 

“Closing down!” 

“Yes. We’re bust. Damn it, we’re getting on splen- 
didly, too. Just turning the corner! We should have had 
a magnificent autumn if it hadn’t been for this. ...” 

He came away from Bundy, and walked aimlessly down 
Fleet Street. “Lots of other people would have had a fine 
autumn if it hadn’t been for this,” he thought to himself, 
and then he saw Leadenham and Crowborough, who worked 
on the Cottenham Guardian. They were very pale and 
tired-looking. 

“Hilloa!” he said, slapping Leadenham on the back. 

Leadenham jumped . . . startled! “Oh, it’s you,” he 
said, smiling weakly. 

“Yes. What’s up? You look frightened !” He turned 
to greet Crowborough. 

“Well, we’re all rather jiggered by this,” Leadenham 
replied. “We’re going to get something to eat. Come 
with us!” 

They went into a tea-shop and sat down. “Is the 
Guardian all right?” Henry asked. 

“Oh, yes,” said Leadenham wearily, “as right as any- 


CHANGING WINDS 


429 


thing is. Nobody in Fleet Street knows how long his job’ll 
last. Half the men on the Daily Circle have had the sack. 
Some of our chaps have gone! Fleet Street’s full of men 
looking for jobs, j^bout fifty papers have smashed up 
since the thing began . . . sporting papers mostly. It 
frightens you, this sort of thing! ...” 

He came away from Fleet Street as quickly as possible. 
The nervous, hectic state of the journalists made him feel 
nervous too. 

“I’d better get among less jumpy people,” he said to 
himself, and he hurried towards Charing Cross. And there 
he met Jimphy. He did not recognise him at first, for 
Jimphy was in khaki, and he would have passed on with- 
out seeing him, had Jimphy not caught hold of his arm and 
stopped him. 

“Cutting a chap, damn you!” said Jimphy. . . . 

“Good Lofd, I didn’t know you!” 

“Thought you didn’t. Where you going?” 

“Oh, nowhere. Just loafing about. Gilbert’s down at 
Scotland Yard trying to enlist.” 

“Is he, begad? Everybody seems to be trying to en- 
list. He’d much better try to get a commission. I’m go- 
ing home now. You come with me, Quinny. Hi, hi ! . . .” 
He hailed a taxi-cab, and, without waiting to hear what 
Henry had to say, bundled him into it. 

“Lord,” he exclaimed, as he leant back in the cab, “it’s 
years an’ years an’ years since I saw you. Well, what 
do you think of this for a bally war, eh ? Millions of ’em 
. . . all smackin’ each other. I’m going out soon!” He 
leant out of the window and shouted at the driver, “Hi, 
you chap, hurry up, will you! 

“I don’t seem able to get anywhere quick enough nowa- 
days,” he said as he sat back again in his seat. “You 
know,” he went on, “we’ve never been to the Empire yet, 
you an’ me. Damned if we have! Never mind! We’ll 
go when the War’s over!” 


430 


CHANGING WINDS 


7 

There were half a dozen women in the drawing-room 
with Cecily when Henry and Jimphy entered it. In addi- 
tion to the women, there were a photographer and Boltt. 
The photographer had finished his work and was prepar- 
ing to depart, and Boltt was talking in his nice little 
clipped voice about the working-class. It appeared that 
the working-class had not realised the seriousness of the 
situation. The other classes had been quick to understand 
and to offer themselves, but the working-class. . . .No! 
Oo, noo I Boltt had written an article in the Everiing Ga- 
zette full of gentle reproach to the working-class, but with- 
out effect. The working-class had taken no notice. “De- 
mocracy, dear ladies,’^ said Boltt, with a downward mo- 
tion of his fingers. “Democracy!^’ A newspaper, a La- 
bour newspaper, had been rather rude to Boltt. It had 
put some intimate, he might say, impertinent, questions to 
Boltt, but Boltt had borne this impertinent inquisition with 
fortitude. He had not made any answer to it. . . . 

“Hilloa, Paddy Lady Cecily called across the room to 
Henry. “Aren’t you at the war?” 

“Well, no, I only got to London. ...” 

“Oh, but everybody’s going. Jimphy and everybody! 
Except Mr. Boltt, of course. He’s unfit or something. 
Aren’t you, Mr. Boltt?” 

“Ah, if I were only a young man again. Lady Ce- 
cily! . . .” 

“But he’s writing to the papers, and that’s something, 
isn’t it?” Cecily interrupted. “And I’m making mittens 
for the soldiers. We’re all making mittens. Except Mr. 
Boltt, of course.” 

“Who was the johnny who’s just gone out?” Jimphy 
demanded. “Was he the chap who sells the stuff you make 
the mittens out of? . . .” 

“Oh, no, Jimphy, he was a photographer. We’re all to 
have our photographs in the Daily Reflexion. ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


431 


^‘Except Mr. Henry asked maliciously. 

‘‘No, Mr. Boltt’s to be in it too. Holding wool. I’ve 
been photographed in three different positions . . . begin- 
ning to knit a mitten, half-way through a mitten, and 
finishing a mitten. I was rather anxious to be taken with 
a pile of socks, but I can ’t knit socks ! . . . ” 

“You can’t knit mittens either,” said Jimphy. 

It appeared that Lady Cecily’s maid was allowed to undo 
her mistress’s false stitches and finish the mittens prop- 
erly. . . . 

“Well, of course, I’m not really a knitter,” Cecily ad- 
mitted, “but I feel I must do something for the country. 
I’ve a good mind to take up nursing. I met Jenny Cus- 
toms this morning, and she says it’s quite easy, and the 
uniform is rather nice. ...” 

“But don’t you require to be trained?” Henry asked 
dubiously. 

“Oh, yes, if you’re a professional. But I’m not. I’m 
doing it for the country. Jenny Customs went to a First 
Aid Class, and learnt quite a lot about bandaging. She can 
change sheets while the patient is in bed, and she says he 
can scarcely tell that she’s doing it. I should love to be 
able to do that. She told me a lot of things, and I really 
know the first lesson already. I can shake a bottle of med- 
icine the proper way! ...” 

‘ ‘ Can ’t we have tea or something ? ’ ’ said Jimphy. ‘ ‘ Oh, 
by the way, Cecily, Quinn says that chap Gilbert Farlow’s 
hanging about Scotland Yard. ...” 

“Goodness me, what for?” Cecily demanded in a star- 
tled voice. “He hasn’t done anything, has he?” 

“No, of course he hasn’t. He’s trying to enlist!” 

“Enlist!” she said. 

“Yes. Silly ass not to ask for a commission !” said Jim- 
phy. 

Boltt burbled about the priceless privilege of youth. If 
only he were a youngster once again ! . . . 

They drank their tea, while Jimphy discoursed on the 


4S2 


CHANGING WINDS 


war. Henry had entered Cecily’s house with a feeling of 
alarm, wondering whether she would be friendly to him, 
wondering whether he would be able to look into her eyes 
and not care . . . and now he knew that he did not care. 
There was something incredibly unfeeling and trivial 
about Cecily, something . . . vulgar. While the world 
was still reeling from the shock of the War, she was ar- 
ranging to be photographed with mittens that she had not 
made and could not make. The portrait would be re- 
produced in the Dail^ Reflexion under the title of “Lady 
Cecily Jayne Does Her Bit.” . . . But she was beautiful, 
undeniably she was beautiful. As he looked at her, she 
raised her eyes, conscious perhaps of his stare, and smiled 
at him. . . . 

“She’d smile at anybody,” he said to himself. “If she 
had any feeling at all for me, she ’d be angry with me ! ” 

She came to him. “I wish you’d tell Gilbert to come 
and see me,” she said, sitting down beside him. 

“Very well,” he answered, “I will!” 

“I’m sure he’ll look awfully nice in khaki. And I 
should love to see him saluting Jimphy. He’ll have to do 
that, you know, if he’s a private. ...” 


8 

He got away as soon as he could decently do so, and went 
back to Bloomsbury. “That isn’t England,” he told him- 
self, “that mitten-making, posturing crew!” and he re- 
membered the great queues of men, standing outside Scot- 
land Yard, struggling to get into the Army, and suffering 
much discomfort in the effort. 

“Perhaps,” he said to himself, “Gilbert’s at home now. 
I wonder if he managed to get in !” 

A man and a woman were standing at the corner of a 
street, talking, and he overheard them as he passed. 

“ ’Illoa, Sarah,” the man said, “w’ere you goin’, eih?” 


CHANGING WINDS 


433 


^^Goin’ roun^ the awfices/' she answered, ‘‘to see if I 
kin get a job o’ charin’!” 

‘ ‘ Gawblimey ! ’ ’ said the man, laughing at her. 

“Well, you got to do somethink, ’aven’t you? No good 
sittin’ on your be’ind an’ ’owlin’ because there’s a war on, 
is there?” 

There was more of the spirit of England in that, Henry 
thought, than in Cecily’s mitten-making. . . . 

Gilbert was not at home when he reached the Bloomsbury 
boarding-house. ‘ ‘ Still trying, I suppose, ’ ’ Henry thought. 

There was a telegram for him. His father was ill again, 
“seriously ill,” was the message, and he was needed at 
home. 

He hurriedly wrote a note to be given to Gilbert when 
he returned, in case he should not see him again, but be- 
fore he had begun his packing, Gilbert came in. 

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve joined. I’ve had a 
week’s leave. ... I’m damned tired!” 

“My father’s ill again, Gilbert. I’ve just had a tele- 
gram, and I ’m going back to-night ! . . . ” 

“I’m awf’lly sorry, Quinny!” Gilbert said, quickly 
sympathetic. 

“I met Jimphy at Charing Cross. He’s in khaki. He 
took me back to tea. Cecily’s making mittens! ...” 

“She would,” said Gilbert. 

‘ ‘ She told me to tell you to go and see her ! ’ ’ 

“Did she, indeed?” 

“You’ll stay here, I suppose,” Henry went on, “until 
you’re called up?” Gilbert nodded his head. “Let me 
know what happens to you afterwards, will you?” 

“Righto!” 

“I’ll come back as soon as I can, Gilbert!” 


THE SIXTH CHAPTER 


1 ; 

Mr. Quinn died at Christmas. The old man, weakened by 
his long illness, had been stunned by the War, and when 
his second illness seized him, he made no effort to resist it. 

He would lie very quietly for a long while, and then a 
paroxysm of fury would possess him, and he would shake 
his fist impotently in the air. “If they wanted a war,’^ 
he shouted once, “why didnT they go and fight it them- ' 
selves. They were paid to keep the peace, and ... 
and! ...” i 

He fell back on his pillow, exhausted, and when Henry, 
hurrying up the stairs to him the moment he heard the 
shout, reached him, he was gasping for breath. “It’s all 
right, son!” he said when he had recovered himself. “It’s ' 
all right! . . .” 

“It’s foolish of you, father, to agitate yourself like that,” ; 
Henry said to him, putting his arms round him and lifting 
him into a more comfortable position. ' 

“I can’t help it, Henry, when I think of ... of all the 
young lads! ... By God, they’d no right to do it! . . .” 

“Hush, father! ...” 

“They’d no right to do it! You’d think they were 
greedy for blood . . . young men’s blood!” He pointed i 
to an English newspaper lying on the floor. “Did you ' 
read that paper?” he said. 

“Yes.” 

“Houndin’ them into it,” the old man went on. 
“Yellin’ for young men! By God, I’d be ashamed ... 
parsons an’ women an’ old men that can’t fight themselves, 

434 


CHANGING WINDS 4^5 

houndin’ young men into it ! If they ’d any decency, they’d 
shut up. ...” 

‘‘All right, father!” 

“The man that owns this paper . . . whatshis- 
name! ...” 

“It doesn’t matter, does it? Lie still and be quiet!” 

“I can’t be quiet. Like a damned big monster, yellin’ 
for boys to eat. Has he any childher, will you tell 
me? . . 

“I don’t know, father!” 

“Of course he hasn’t. An’ here he is, yelpin’ in his 
damned rag every day, ‘Fee-fo-fum, I smell the blood of 
a young man!’ Why don’t they shove him at the Front 
. . . the very front!” 

“You must keep quiet, father!” 

“All right, Henry, all right!” 

He was silent for a few minutes, and then he began 
again, in a quieter voice. “I’d have put the men that 
made it, the whole lot of them, in the front rank, and let 
them blow themselves to blazes. Old men sittin’ in of- 
fices, an’ makin’ wars, an’ then biddin’ young men to pay 
the price of them ! By God, that ’s mean ! By God, that ’s 
low! . . .” 

“But old men couldn’t bear the strain of it, father!” 
Henry interjected, and he recalled some of the horrors of 
the trenches where the soldiers had stood with the water 
reaching to their waists; but Mr. Quinn insisted that the 
old men should have fought the war they made. 

“Who cares a damn whether they can bear it or not,” he 
said. “Let ’em die, damn ’em! They’re no good!” He 
turned quickly to Henry, and demanded, “What good are 
they? Tell me that now!” but before Henry could make 
an answer to him, he went off insistently, “They’re no good, 
I tell you. I know well what they’re like . . . sittin’ in their 
clubs, yappin’ an’ yappin’ an’ demandin’ this an’ de- 
mandin’ that, an’ gettin’ on one another’s nerves; an’ 
whatever happens it’s not them that suffers for it: it’s 


436 


CHANGING WINDS 


the young lads that pays for everything. Look at the way 
the old fellows go on in Parliament, Henry! By God, I 
want to vomit when I read about them! Yappin’ an^ yap- 
pin’ when they should be down on their knees beggin’ God’s 
forgiveness. ...” 

He spoke as if he were not himself an old man, and it 
did not seem strange to Henry that he should speak in that 
fashion, for Mr. Quinn’s spirit had always been a young 
spirit. 

“An’ these wee bitches with their white feathers,” he 
went on, “ought to be well skelped. If I had a daughter, 
an’ she did a thing like that, by God, I’d break her skull 
for her!” 

“I suppose they think they’re doing their duty, father, 
and they’re young! ...” 

“There’s women at it, too. I read in the paper yester- 
day mornin’ that there was grown women doin’ it. There’s 
nobody has any right to bid a man go to that except them 
that’s been to it themselves. If the women an’ the par- 
sons an’ the old men can’t fight for their country, they 
can hold their tongues for it, an’ by God they ought to 
be made to hold them. ...” 

He asked continually after Gilbert. 

“He’s a sergeant now, father. He’s been offered a com- 
mission, but he won’t take it! . . .” 

“Why?” 

“Oh, one of his whimsy- whamsies, I suppose. He says 
the non-commissioned officers are the backbone of the Army, 
and he prefers to be part of the backbone. You remem- 
ber Ninian Graham, father?” 

“I do, rightly! . . .” 

“He’s come home to join. He’s in the Engineers!” 

Mr. Quinn did not make any answer to Henry. He 
slipped a little further into the bed, and lay for a long 
while with his eyes closed, so long that Henry thought he 
had fallen asleep; but, just when Henry began to tiptoe 


CHANGING WINDS 


437 


from the room, he opened his eyes again, and suddenly they 
were full of tears. 

“The fine young fellows,^’ he said. “The fine young 
lads!^^ 


2 

And at Christmas, he died. He had called Henry to him 
that morning, and had enquired about “The Fennels,'’ 
which had lately been published after a postponement and 
much hesitation, and about the new book on which Henry 
was now working. 

“That’s right,” he said, when he heard that Henry was 
working steadily on it. “It’ll keep your mind from 
broodin’. How’s the Ulster book goin’?” 

“ ‘The Fennels’?” 

“Ay. You had hard luck, son, in bringing out your 
best book at a time like this, but never matter, never mat- 
ter! . . .” 

“I don’t know how it’s doing. It’s too soon to tell yet. 
The reviews have been good, but I don’t suppose people 
are buying books at present 1 ’ ’ 

“You’ve done a good few now, Henry!” 

“Five, father.” 

“Ay, I have the lot there on that ledge so’s I can take 
them down easily an’ look at them. I feel proud of you, 
son . . . proud of you!” 

He began to remind Henry of things that had happened 
when he was a boy. His mind became flooded with mem- 
ories. ‘ ‘ Do you mind Bridget Fallon ? ” he would say, and 
then he would recall many incidents that were connected 
with her. “Do you mind the way you wanted to go to 
Cambridge, an’ I wouldn’t let you,” and “Do you mind 
the time you took the woollen balls from Mr. Maginn’s 
house? ...” 

Henry remembered. Mr. Maginn, the vicar of Bally- 


438 


CHANGING WINDS 


martin, had invited Henry to spend the afternoon with his 
nephew and niece and some other children. They had 
played a game with balls made of coloured wool, and while 
they were playing, Henry, liking the pattern of one of 
them, had put it into his pocket. It had been missed, and 
there had been a search for it, in which Henry had joined. 
He was miserable, and he wanted to confess that he had 
the ball, but every time he opened his lips to say that he 
had it, he felt afraid, and so he had refrained from speak- 
ing. He felt, too, that every one knew that he had taken 
it, but still he could not confess that he had it, and when 
they said, ‘HsnT it queer? I wonder where it’s gone !” he 
had answered, ‘‘Yes, isn’t it queer?” They had aban- 
doned the search, and had played another game, but all the 
pleasure of the party was lost for Henry. He kept saying 
to himself, “You’ve got it. You^ve got it! . . .” 

He had hurried home after the party was over, and when 
he reached the shrubbery, he dug a hole and buried the 
ball in it. He had closed his eyes as he took it out of his 
pocket, so that he should not see the bright colours of it, 
and had heaped the earth on to it as if he could not con- 
ceal it quickly enough . . . but burying it had not quieted 
his mind. He felt, whenever he met Mr. Maginn, that the 
vicar looked at him as if he were saying to himself, “You 
stole the woollen ball! . . .” At the end of the month, he 
had gone to his father and told him of it, and Mr. Quinn 
had cocked his eye at him for a moment and considered the 
subject. 

“If I were you, Henry,” he had said, “I’d dig up that 
ball and take it back to Mr. Maginn and just tell him about 
it!” 

Henry could remember how hard it had been to do that, 
how he had loitered outside the gates of the vicarage for 
an hour, trying to force himself to go up to the door and 
ask for the vicar . . . and how kind Mr. Maginn had been 
when, at last, he had made his confession ! 

Oh, yes, he remembered! . , . 


CHANGING WINDS 


439 


‘'You were a funny wee lad, Henry,’' Mr. Quinn said, 
taking his son 's hand in his. ‘ ‘ Always imaginin ’ things ! ’ ’ 
He thought for a second or two. “I suppose,” he went on, 
“that’s what makes you able to write books . . . imaginin’ 
things ! Ay, that ’s it ! ” 

They sat in quietness for a while, and then Mr. Quinn 
fell asleep, and Henry went down to the library and worked 
again on his new novel, for which he had not yet found a 
title; and in his sleep, Mr. Quinn died. 


3 

Henry had finished a chapter of the book, and he put 
down his pen, and yawned. He was tired, and he thought 
gratefully of tea. Hannah would bring a tray to his 
father’s room. There would be little soda farls and toasted 
barn-brack, and perhaps she would have made “slim-jim,” 
and there would be newly-churned butter and home-made 
jam, which Hannah, in her Ulster way, would call “Pre- 
serve.” . . . 

He got up from the table and went into the hall. 

“Will tea be long, Hannah?” he called down the stairs, 
leading to the kitchens. 

“Haven’t I it near ready?” she answered. 

He had gone up the staircase at a run, and had entered 
his father’s room, expecting to see him sitting up. . . . 

“Hilloa,” he said, stopping sharply, “still asleep!” and 
he went out of the room and called softly to Hannah, now 
coming up the stairs, to take the tray to the library. “He’s 
asleep, Hannah!” he said almost in a whisper. 

“He’s never asleep at this hour,” she answered. 

And somehow, as she said that, he knew. He went back 
into the room and leant over his father, listening. . . . 

“ Is he dead. Master Henry ? ’ ’ Hannah said, as she came 
into the room. She had left the tray on a table on the 
landing. 


uo 


CHANGING WINDS 


Henry straightened himself and turned to her. ‘‘Yes, 
Hannah ! ^ ^ he said quietly. 

The old woman threw her apron over her head and let a 
great cry out of her. ‘ ‘ Och, ochanee ! ’ ’ she moaned, ‘ ‘ Och, 
och, ochanee! . . 


4 

He had none of the terror he had had when Mrs. Clut- 
ters lay dead in the Bloomsbury house. He went into the 
room and stood beside his father’s body. The finely 
moulded face had a proud look and a great look of peace. 
“I don’t feel that he’s dead,” Henry murmured to him- 
self. “I shall never feel that he’s dead!” 

“I wasn’t with him enough,” he went on. “I left him 
alone too often. ...” 

Extraordinarily, they had loved each other. Under- 
neath all that roughness of speech and violence of state- 
ment, there was great tenderness and understanding. He 
spoke his mind, and. more than his mind, but he was gener- 
ous and quick to retract and quicker to console. “I’m an 
Ulsterman,” he said once. “Ulster to the marrow, an’ 
begod I ’m proud of it ! ” 

“But I’m Irish too,” he added, turning to John Marsh 
as he said it, fearful lest he should have hurt John’s feel- 
ings. “Begod, it’s gran’ to be Irish. I pity the poor 
devils that aren’t! ...” 

He was a great lover of life, exulting in his strength and 
vigour, shouting sometimes for the joy of hearing himself 
shout. ‘ ‘ And shy, too, ’ ’ Henry murmured to himself, ‘ ‘ shy 
as a wren about intimate things!” 

The sight of his father’s placid face comforted him. One 
might cry over other people, but not over Mm. Henry 
felt that if he were to weep for his father, and the old man, 
regaining life for a moment were to open his eyes and see 
him, he would shout at him, “Good God, Henry, what are 


CHANGING WINDS 


441 


you cryin^ about? Go out, man, an’ get the fresh air 
about you! ...” 

He put his hand out and touched the dead man. 

“All right, father!” he said aloud. . . . 

5 

There was much to do after the burial, and it was not 
until the beginning of the Spring that Henry left Bally- 
martin. He had completed his sixth novel, and had asked 
that the proofs should be sent to him as speedily as possi- 
ble so that he might correct them before he left Ireland, 
and while he was waiting for them, he had travelled to 
Dublin for a few days, partly on business connected with 
his estate and partly to see his friends. Mr. Quinn had 
spent a great deal of money on his farming experiments, 
the more freely as he found that Henry’s books brought 
him an increasing income, and so Henry had decided to 
let the six hundred acres which Mr. Quinn himself had 
farmed. At first, he had thought of selling the land, but 
it seemed to him that his father would have liked him to 
keep it, and so he did not do so. He settled his affairs with 
his solicitors, and then returned to Ballymartin ; but before 
he did so, he spent an evening with John Marsh, whom he 
found still keenly drilling. 

“But why are you drilling now?” he asked. “This 
hardly seems the time to be playing at soldiers, John!” 

“I’m not playing, Henry. I am a soldier ! ’ ’ 

It was difficult to remember how many armies there 
were in Ireland. The Ulster Volunteers still sulked in 
the North. The National Volunteers had split. The 
politicians, alarmed at the growth of the Volunteer Move- 
ment among their followers, had swooped down on the 
Volunteers and “captured” them. John Marsh and Gal- 
way and their friends had seceded, and, under the presi- 
dency of a professor of the National University, John Mac- 


44S 


CHANGING WINDS 


Neill, had formed a new body, called the Irish Volunteers. 
The politicians, failing to understand the temper of their 
time, worked to discourage the growth of the Volunteer 
Movement, and the result of their efforts was that the more 
enthusiastic and courageous of the National Volunteers 
seceded to the Irish Volunteers. 

^‘We’re growing rapidly,’’ John said to Henry. 
‘‘They’re flocking out of the Nationals into ours as hard 
as they can. We’ve got Thomas MacDonagh and Patrick 
Pearse and a few others with us, and we’re trying to link 
up with Larkins’ Citizen Army. Mineely’s urging Con- 
nolly on to our side, but Connolly’s more interested in the 
industrial fight than in the national fight. But I think 
we’ll get him over!” 

Their objects were to defend themselves from attack by 
the Ulster Volunteers if attack were made, to raise a rebel- 
lion if the Home Rule Bill were not passed into law, and 
to resist the enactment of conscription in Ireland. The 
burden of their belief was still the fear of betrayal. ‘ ‘ But 
you ’re going to get Home Rule, ’ ’ Henry would say to them, 
and they would answer, “We’ll believe it when we see the 
King opening the Parliament in College Green. Not be- 
fore. We know what, the English are like. ...” 

Henry had suggested to them that they should offer the 
services of their volunteers to the Government in return 
for the immediate enactment of the Bill, but they saw no 
hope of such an offer being accepted and honoured. ‘ ‘ The 
minute they’d got us out of the way, they’d break their 
word,” said Galway. “Our only hope is to stay here and 
make ourselves as formidable as we can. You can’t per- 
suade the English to do the decent thing . . . you can 
only terrorise them into it. Look at the way the Ulster 
people have frightened the wits out of them! ...” 

“But the Ulster people haven’t frightened the wits out 
of them. I can’t understand you fellows! You sit here 
with preconceived ideas in your heads, and you won’t check 


CHANGING WINDS 


443 


them by going to see the people you’re theorising about. 
You keep on saying the same thing over and over again, 
and you won’t listen to any one who tells you that you’ve 
got hold of the wrong end of the stick! ...” 

^‘My dear Henry,” said John, '‘our history is enough 
for us. Even since the war, the English have tried to be- 
little the Irish. They’ve done the most inept, small things 
to annoy us. They’d have got far more men from Ireland 
than they have done, if they ’d behaved decently ; but they 
couldn’t. They simply couldn’t do the decent thing to 
Ireland. That’s their nature. ... I’d have gone my- 
self! . . .” 

“You?” 

“Yes. I think the Germans are in the wrong. I think 
they’ve behaved badly, and anyhow, I don’t like their 
theory of life. But the English couldn’t treat us properly. 
We wanted an Irish Division, with Irish officers, and Irish 
colours, and Irish priests . . . but no! They actually 
stopped some women in the South from making an Irish 
flag for the Irish regiments! . . . What are you to do 
with people like that. If they aren’t treacherous, they’re 
so stupid that it’s impossible to do anything with them, 
and we’d much better be separate from them!” 

“I should have thought that Belgium showed the folly 
of that sort of thing, ’ ’ said Henry. ‘ ‘ A little country can ’t 
keep itself separate from a big one. It’ll get hurt if it 
does.” 

“Belgium fought, didn’t she?” John answered. “I 
daresay we should get beaten, too, but we could fight, 
couldn’t we?” 

Henry went away from them in a state of depression. It 
seemed impossible to persuade them to behave reasonably. 
Fixed and immovable in their minds was this belief that 
England would use them in her need . . . and then betray 
them when her need was satisfied. 

He went back to Ballymartin and corrected his proofs. 


444i 


CHANGING WINDS 


^‘I’ll go over to England next week/^ he said to himself 
when he had revised the final proofs and posted them to 
his publishers. 

6 

Mrs. Graham had written to him when his father died. 
dear Henry she wrote, I knoiv how you must feel 
at the death of your father , and I know, too, that you will 
not wish to have your sorrow intruded on. A letter is a 
poor thing, hut, my dear, I send you all my sympathy. I 
never saw your father, but Ninian has often spoken of him 
to me, and I know that his loss must he almost unbearable 
to you. Perhaps he was glad, as I should be glad, to slip 
away from the thought and memory of this horrible war, 
and that may bring comfort to you. If you feel lonely 
and unhappy at home, come to Boveyhayne for a while. 
You know how glad we shall be to have you. It is very 
quiet here now, more than a hundred of our men have 
gone into the Navy or the Army, and the poor women are 
full of anxiety about them. Ninian has just been moved to 
Colchester. I daresay he has written to you before this. 
If you would like to come to Boveyhayne just send a tele- 
gram to me. That will be sufficient. Believe me, my dear 
Henry, Your sincere friend, Janet Graham.’^ 

He remembered Mrs. Graham’s letter now, and he went 
to his writing desk and took it from the notes of condo- 
lence he had received. Ninian and Gilbert and Roger had 
written to him, short, abrupt letters that he knew were full 
of kindly concern for him, and Rachel had written too. 
There was a letter from Mary. 

Dear Quinny, you donH know how sorry I am. It must 
be awful to lose your father when you and he have been 
such chums. I can only just remember my father, and how 
I cried when he was taken away, and so I know how hard 
it must be for you. Your friend, Mary. 


CHANGING WINDS 


445 


He read Mrs. Graham’s note, and Mary’s several times, 
and as he read them, he had a longing to go to Boveyhayne 
again. The house at Ballymartin was so lonely, now that 
his father’s heavy footsteps no longer sounded through the 
hall. Sometimes, forgetting that he was dead, Henry 
would stop suddenly and listen as if he were listening for 
his father’s voice. Since his return from Dublin, he had 
felt his loss more poignantly than he had before he went 
away. In the old days, his father would have been at 
the station to meet him. There would have been a hearty 
shout, and. . . . 

“I must go,” he said to himself, “I must go. I can’t 
bear to be here now.” 

He went down to the village and telegraphed to Mrs. 
Graham telling her that he would be with her two days 
later, and while he was in the post office, the Belfast Evening 
Telegraph came in. 

“ I ’ll take my copy with me, ’ ’ he said to the post-mistress, 
and he opened it at once to read the news. There was a 
paragraph in a comer of the paper, which caught his eye 
at once. It announced the death in action of Lord Jasper 
Jayne. 

“My God!” he said, crumpling the paper as he gaped at 
the announcement. 

“Is it bad news, sir?” the post-mistress asked. 

“A friend of mine,” he answered, turning to her. 
“Killed at the Front!” 

“Aw, dear,” she said. “Aw, dear-a-dear! An’ there’ll 
be plenty more, sir. There’s young fellas away from the 
village, sir. My own nephew’s away. You mind him, 
don’t you, sir! Peter Logan! ...” 

“Peter Logan !” 

“Ay, he used to keep the forge ’til he married Matt 
Hamilton’s niece, an’ then he took to the land. Nothin’ 
would stop him, but to be olf. Nothin’ at all would stop 
him. I toul’ him myself the Belgians was Catholics an’ 


446 


CHANGING WINDS 


the Germans was Protestants, but nothin’ would stop 
him. . . 

“Sheila Morgan’s husband,” Henry murmured. 

“Ay,” she answered, “that was her name before she 
was married. He’s trainin’ now, an’ in a while, I sup- 
pose, he’ll be off like the rest of them. Och, ochanee, sir, 
isn’t this a terr’ble world, wi’ nothin’ but fightin’ an’ 
wringlin ’ ? Will that be all you ’re wantin ’, sir ? ” 

“Yes, thanks,” he said. 

Poor old Jimphy! They had all been contemptuous of 
him . . . and now! . . . 

Cecily would be free now! Oh, but what of that? 
Poor Jimphy ! He had not wished for much from life . . . 
and sometimes it had seemed that he had got much more 
than he needed. . . . 

“The best of us can’t do more than he did,” Henry 
thought as he walked home. “A man can’t give more 
than he’s got, and Jimphy ’s given everything!” 

7 

He started up, and looked about the room, and while he 
listened, he could hear the big clock in the hall sounding 
three times. He was shivering, though he was not cold. 
In his dream, he had seen Jimphy, all bloody and 
broken. . . . 

“Oh, my God, how horrible!” he groaned. 

He got up and went to the window, but he could not 
see beyond the high trees, which swayed and moaned and 
took strange shapes in the wind. His dream still held 
his mind, and as he looked into the darkness and saw the 
bending branches yielding and rebounding, it seemed to 
him that he saw the soldiers rushing forward and heard 
their cries, hoarse with war lust or stifled by the blood that 
gushed from their mouths as they staggered and fell . . . 
and as he had seen him in his dream, so he saw Jimphy 
again, running forward and shouting as he ran, until sud- 


CHANGING WINDS 


U1 


denly, with a queer wrinkled look of amazement on his 
face, he stopped, and then, clasping his hands to his head, 
tumbled in a shapeless heap on the ground ... but now 
it seemed to him that as Jimphy fell, his face changed: it 
was no longer Jimphy ’s face, but his own. 

‘‘My God, it’s me!” he cried, shrinking away from the 
window, and clutching at the curtains as if he would cover 
himself with them. “My God, it’s me/” 

He shut his eyes tightly and stumbled back to bed. He 
bruised himself against a chair, but he was afraid to open 
his eyes, and he rolled into bed, covering himself com- 
pletely with the clothes, and buried his face in his folded 
arms. In his mind, one thought hammered insistently: 
I must live! I must live! I must live! 

8 

“I’m run down,” he said to himself in the morning. 
“That’s what’s the matter with me. I’m run down!” 

His father’s death had affected him, he thought, far 
more than he had imagined. He would be all right again 
after a rest in Devonshire. It was natural that he should 
be in a nervous state . . . quite natural. He would go 
straight to Boveyhayne from Liverpool. He could catch 
the Bournemouth Express, and change at Templecombe. 
. . . “That’s what I’ll do,” he said, and he hurried down- 
stairs to prepare for his journey. 


THE SEVENTH CHAPTER 


1 

He changed his mind at Liverpool. ‘‘I’ll go to London 
first,” he said, “and see Roger and Rachel. I might as 
well hear anything there is to hear ! ’ ’ And so he had tele- 
graphed to Roger who met him at Euston. 

“Gilbert’s going out in a few days,” Roger said, when 
they had greeted each other. 

“Out?” 

“Yes. He’s going to the Dardanelles! . . . This job’s 
serious, Quinnyl” he added grimly. “Our two months’ 
estimate was a bit out, wasn’t it? I suppose you haven’t 
heard from Ninian lately? He hasn’t written to me for a 
good while.” 

“Not lately,” Henry answered, “but I shall hear of him 
to-morrow when I get to Boveyhayne. I’ll write and let 
you know!” 

“My Big Army book’s gone to pot, of course!” Roger 
went on. “At present anyhow! ...” 

“The War’s done for the Improved Tories, I suppose?” 

“Absolutely. They’ve all enlisted. Ashley Earls is in 
the R.A.M.C. He went in last week. He couldn’t go be- 
fore ... he was ill. You remember Ernest Carr. He 
tried to enlist when the War began, but he was so crippled 
with rheumatism that they hoofed him out. Well, he’s 
been living like a hermit ever since to get himself cured, 
and he says he’s going on splendidly. He thinks he’ll be 
able to join before long. ...” 

“I wonder if I ought to join,” he went on, more to 
himself than to Henry. “I’ve thought and thought about 
it . . . but I can’t make up my mind. I’ve got a decent 

448 


CHANGING WINDS 


449 


connexion at the Bar now, and if I go into the Army, I 
shall lose it. The fellows who don’t go will get my work. 
And if the War lasts as long as Kitchener reckons, I shall 
be forgotten by the time I get back . . . and I shall have 
to begin again at an age when most men have either es- 
tablished themselves or cleared out of the profession alto- 
gether. I want to do what’s right, but I can’t reconcile 
my two duties, Quinny. I ’ve a duty to England, of course, 
but I think I have a bigger duty to Rachel and Eleanor. 
If they’d only conscript us all, this problem wouldn’t arise 
. . . not so acutely anyhow. I suppose the Government is 
having a pretty hard time, but they do seem to act the goat 
rather ! There ’s a great deal of talk about a man ’s duty to 
England, but very little talk about England’s duty to the 
man. However! ...” He did not finish his sentence, 
but shrugged his shoulders and looked away. 

“I don’t feel happy,” he went on after a while, ^‘when 
I see other men joining up, but I’ve got to think of Rachel 
and Eleanor. . . . When I was going to meet you, Quinny, 
I passed a chap on crutches. His leg was off 1 . . . He made 
me feel damned ashamed. I suppose that’s why they let 
the wounded go about in uniform so freely; to make you 
feel ashamed of yourself. That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m 
afraid I shall rush off to the recruiting office in a burst 
of emotion . . . and I must think of Rachel and Elea- 
nor! ...” 

‘‘I don’t see why you should go before I do, Roger,” 
Henry interjected. 

“Are you going, Quinny?” 

Henry flushed. It hurt him that there should be any 
question about it. 

“Yes,” he said. 

“I don’t think of you as a soldier, Quinny!” 

“I don’t think of myself as one!” He paused for a 
moment, and then, impetuously, he turned to Roger. 

“Roger,” he said, “do you think I’m . . . neurotic? 
Would you say I’m . . . well, degenerate?” 


450 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Don’t be an ass, Quinny!” 

“I’m serious, Koger. I’m not just talking about myself, 
and slopping over!” 

“You’re highly strung, of course, but I shouldn’t say you 
were neurotic. You’re healthy enough, aren’t you?” 

“Oh, yes, I’m healthy enough, but I’m such a damned 
coward, Roger, and sometimes some perfectly uncontrol- 
lable fear seizes me . . . silly frights. I never told you, 
did I, how scared I was when Mrs. Clutters died? . . .” 
He told Roger how he had trembled outside the door of 
the dead woman ’s room. ‘ ‘ Things like that have happened 
to me ever since I was a kid. I make up my mind to join 
the Army, and then I suddenly get panicky, and I can al- 
most feel myself being killed. I’m continually seeing the 
War ... me in it, crouching in a trench waiting for the 
order to go over, and trembling with fright ... so fright- 
ened that I can’t do anything but get killed . . . and it’s 
worse when I think of myself killing other people ... I 
feel sick at the thought of thrusting a bayonet into a 
man’s body . . . squelching through his flesh . . . My 
God! . . .” 

“Yes, I know, Quinny!” Roger said. “One does feel 
like that. But when you’re there, you don’t think of it 
. . . you’re more or less off your head . . . you couldn’t 
do it if you weren’t. They work you up to a kind of 
frenzy, and then you . . . just let yourself go!” 

“But afterwards? Don’t you think a man ’ud go mad 
afterwards when he thought of it? I should. I know I 
should. I’d lie awake at night and see the men I’d 
killed! . . .” 

A passenger in the train had told a story of the trenches 
to Henry, who now repeated it to Roger. 

“One of our men got hold of a German in a German 
trench, and he bayonetted him, but he did it clumsily. 
There wasn’t enough room to kill him properly ... he 
couldn’t withdraw the bayonet and stick it in again and 
finish the man . . . and there they were, jammed together 


CHANGING WINDS 


451 


. . . and the German was squealing, oh, horribly . . . and 
our men had to come and haul the British soldier out of 
the trench. He ’d gone off his head ! . . . ’ ^ 

“One oughtn’t to think of things like that, Quinny!” 

“But if you can’t help it? What terrifies me is that I 
might turn funk ... let my lot down ! . . .” 

“You wouldn’t. You’re the sort that imagines the worst 
and does the best. I shouldn’t think of it any more if I 
were you. A month at Boveyhayne’ll pull you all right 
again. ...” 

“It’s dying that I’m most afraid of. Some of these 
papers write columns and columns of stuff about ‘glorious 
deaths’ at the front, but it doesn’t seem very glorious to 
me to be dead before you’ve had a chance to do your job 
. . . killed like that . . . blown to bits, perhaps ... so 
that they can’t tell which is you and which is some one 
else! . . .” 

Roger nodded his head. “Our journalists contrive to see 
a great deal of glory in war . . . from Fleet Street, don’t 
they, Quinny?” 

“Sometimes,” Henry proceeded, “I think that the worst 
kind of cowardice is to love life too much. That ’s the kind 
of coward I am. I love living. I used to cry when I was 
a kid at the thought that I might die and not be able to 
run about and look at things that I liked ! And that makes 
you funky. You’re afraid to take risks, for fear you should 
lose your life and have to give up the pleasure of living. 
I suppose that’s what the Bible means when it says that 
‘whosoever shall lose his life, shall find it.’ This hunt for 
security melts the marrow in your backbone I . . . ” 

“Perhaps,” said Roger. “Where you go wrong, I think, 
is in imagining that courage consists in hurling yourself 
recklessly on things ... in not caring a damn. I don’t 
think that that’s courage ... it’s simply insensibility . . . 
a sort of permanent imperceptiveness. Really, Quinny, if 
you don’t feel fear, there’s not much of the heroic in your 
acts. That kind of man isn ’t much braver when he ’s plung* 


452 


CHANGING WINDS 


ing at Germans than he is when he’s plunging at a motor- 
omnibus or getting into a ‘scrum’ at Rugger. He simply 
doesn’t see any difference. It’s something to plunge at, 
and so he plunges. I haven’t much faith in the Don’t- 
Care-a-Damn Brigade. They’re more anxious to get V.C’s 
than to get victories. Their courage is just egoism . . . 
they’re thinking, not of their country, but of themselves. 
The real hero, I think, is the man who makes himself do 
something that he’s afraid to do, who goes into a thing, 
trembling with fright, but nevertheless goes into it. Did 
you ever meet Leon Lorthiois?” he said quickly. 

“You mean the French painter who used to hang about 
the Cafe Royal?” Henry replied. 

“Yes. He was killed the other day in France.” 

“I hadn’t heard. Poor chap!” 

“I think he showed extraordinary courage. He started 
off from London to join the French Army ... all his 
friends dined him jolly well . . . and wished him good- 
luck, and so on, and then he went off. And a week later, 
he turned up again with a cock-and-bull story about having 
been arrested as a deserter. He said he’d escaped from 
prison and, after a lot of difficulty and hardship, got back 
to England. But he hadn’t done anything of the sort. 
He’d funked it at the last. He got as far as Dover, and 
then he turned back . . . frightened. He stayed in Lon- 
don for a while . . . and then he tried again . . . and this 
time he didn’t funk it! They say he was fighting splen- 
didly when he was killed. Men have got the V.C. for less 
heroic behaviour than that. He’d conquered himself. I 
used to despise that fellow because he wore eccentric 
clothes and had his hair cut in a silly fashion . . . but I 
feel proud now of having known him ! ’ ’ 

2 

Mary met him at Whitcombe, and they walked home, 
sending his trunk and portmanteau on in the carriage with 


CHANGING WINDS 


453 


Widger. He had anticipated their meeting with strange 
emotion, feeling as if he were returning to her after a time 
of misunderstanding, richer in knowledge, more capable of 
sympathy. He had not seen her since the first performance 
of “The Magic Casement, and very much had happened 
to them since then. His desire for Cecily seemed to have 
died. He had not troubled to visit her in London ... he 
could have found time to do so, had he been anxious to see 
her . . . but he had not the wish. He had not written to 
her about Jimphy ... he could not bring himself to do 
that . . . and the thought that she might wish to see him 
did not stir his mind. He felt for her what a man feels 
for a woman he has loved, but now loves no more : neither 
like nor dislike, but, occasionally, curiosity that did not 
last long. She moved him as little as Sheila Morgan had 
done when he saw her in the field at Ballymartin, big with 
child, watching her husband drilling. 

“There are permanent things in one’s life, and there 
are impermanent things . . . and you can’t turn the one 
into the other,” he thought to himself, as the little branch 
railway drove down the Axe Valley. “I wanted Cecily 
. . . and then I didn’t want her. There’s no more to be 
said about it than that ! ’ ’ 

There were very few people waiting on the platform 
when the train drew into Whitcombe, and so Henry and 
Mary saw each other immediately, and when he saw her, 
standing on the windy platform, with her hand to her 
hat, he felt more powerfully than he had ever felt it, his 
old love for her surging through him. Nothing could ever 
divert him from her for very long . . . inevitably he would 
return to her . . . whatever of permanence there was in 
his life was centred in her. He led her out of the station 
and they walked along the road at the top of the shingle 
. . . and as they walked, suddenly he turned to her and, 
drawing her arm in his, told her that he loved her. 

“I haven’t much to offer you, Mary ... I’m a poor sort 
of fellow at the best ... but I need you, and! ...” 


454 


CHANGING WINDS 


She did not answer, but she looked up at him with shin- 
ing eyes. . . . 

“My dear!” he said, and drew her very close to him. 

3 

They went up the path over the red cliffs and then 
climbed the steep steps that led to the top of the White 
Cliff. The night was beginning to gather her clouds about 
her, but still they did not hurry homewards. Far out, 
they could see the trawlers returning to the Bay, dipping 
and rising and plunging and reeling before the wind as 
from a heavy blow, and then, when it seemed that they must 
fall, righting themselves and moving swiftly homewards. 
Beneath them, the sea splashed in great thick waves that 
tossed their spray high in the air, and the gulls and jack- 
daws spun round and up and down or huddled themselves 
in the shelter of the cliffs. 

“Mary!” he said, putting his arm about her. 

“Yes, Quinny!” she answered so quietly that he could 
not hear her above the noise of the sea and the wind. 

He raised her lips to his and kissed her. 

“My dear!” he said again. 

4 

There was news of Ninian for them when they reached 
the Manor. Mrs. Graham, with his letter in her hand, met 
them at the door. 

“He’s coming home on leave,” she said. “He’ll be here 
to-morrow night. Then he’s going out! ...” 

She turned away quickly, after she had spoken, and they 
followed her silently into the drawung-room. She stood for 
a while at the window, gazing down the avenue where the 
oaks and the chestnuts mingled their branches and made a 
covering for passers-by. 

“I’ll just go upstairs,” Henry began, but before he could 


CHANGING WINDS 


455 


leave the room, Mrs. Graham turned away from the win- 
dow and went to him. 

“IVe put you in your old room, Henry, she said. 
‘ ‘ How are you ? You don ’t look well ! ’ ’ 

“I’m tired . . . but I shall be all right presently. I’ll 
just go upstairs now! ...” 

He left her hurriedly, for Mary was anxious to tell her 
mother of their betrothal, and he wished her to know as 
quickly as possible. He dallied in his room so that she 
might have plenty of time in which to learn Mary’s news. 
He sat on the wide window-seat and let his mind roam over 
his memories. It was in this room that he had first told 
himself that he loved Mary ... it was at this very window 
he had stood while he resolved that he would marry Sheila 
Morgan, and again had considered what Ninian and Gil- 
bert had said about men who marry out of their class. Al- 
most he expected to hear the door opening as Gilbert walked 
in, just as he had done then. . . . 

“It’s no good mooning like this,” he said to himself, 
and then he went downstairs a^ain. 

Mary was sitting beside her mother, holding her hand, 
and as he entered she turned to look at him, and smiled 
so that he knew what he must do, and so, without hesitation, 
he crossed the room to Mrs. Graham and kissed her. 

“I’m very glad, Henry!” she said. “Sit down here!” 

She moved so that he could sit beside her, and when 
he had settled himself, she put her hand on his shoulder. 
“It’s nice to have you back again,” she said. 

They spent the time until dinner in desultory talk that 
sometimes lapsed into lengthy silence. A high wind was 
blowing up from the’ sea, and when they had dined, they 
drew their chairs close to the fire, and sat quietly in the 
warmth of it. They could hear the heavy rustle of the 
leaves as the trees swayed in the wind, and now and then 
raindrops fell down the chimney and sizzled in the hot 
coals. The lamps ^were left unlit, and the firelight made 
long shadows round the room, flickering over the old 


456 


CHANGING WINDS 


polished furniture and the silverware and the dim por- 
traits of dead Grahams. . . . 

Mary moved from her chair and, placing a cushion on the 
floor between Henry and her mother, she sat down and 
leant her head against him. He bent forward slightly, and 
placed his hand on her shoulder, and as he did so, she put 
hers up and took hold of it and so they sat in exquisite 
peace and quietness until the rising wind, gathering itself 
together in greater strength, flung itself heavily on the 
house and shook it roughly. In the lull, they could hear 
the rain beating sharply on the windows . . . and as they 
listened to the noise of the storm, their minds wandered 
away, and in their imagination they could see the soldiers 
in France, crouching in the dark trenches, while the wind 
and rain beat about them without pity; and in the mind 
of each of them, probing painfully, was this persistent 
thought : Here we are in this comfort . . . and there they 
are in that! 


5 

When Mary had gone to bed, Mrs. Graham began to talk 
of her to Henry. 

“I always knew that she and you would marry, Henry, 
she said, “even when you seemed to have forgotten about 
her. You . . . you were very fond of Lady Cecily Jayne, 
weren’t you, Henry?” He nodded his head. He wanted 
to explain that that was over now, that it had been a pass- 
ing thing that had no durability, but he could not make the 
explanation, and so he did not say anything. “I thought 
her a very beautiful woman, ’ ’ Mrs. Graham went on. ‘ ‘ If 
I’d been a boy I think I should have loved her, too. Boys 
are like that!” 

She was so gentle and kind and understanding that he 
lost his shyness, and he confided in her as he would like to 
have confided in his mother if she had been alive. 

“Inside me,” he said, “I always loved Mary, even when 


CHANGING WINDS 


457 


I was obsessed by . . . by some one else. I can’t tell you 
how happy I am, Mrs. Graham. I feel as if I’d got home 
after a long and bitter journey . . . and I don’t want to 
go away again ever. Just to look at Mary seems sufficient 
... to know that she’s there . . . that I can put out my 
hand and touch her. ...” 

“Ninian will be glad, too,” she said, speaking quickly 
to cover up the difficulty he had in finishing his speech. 

“We’ve been awfully good friends, we four,” he replied, 

I “Ninian and Roger and Gilbert and I. I’ve always felt 
I about them that we could go on with our friendship just 
I where we left off, even if we were separated from each other 
I for years. We’re all proud of each other. I used to think, 

I when we first lived in that house in Bloomsbury, that we ’d 
never separate . . . that we’d form a sort of brotherhood 
of work and friendship . . . Roger always preached about 
The Job Well Done . . . but, of course that was impossible. 
We were bound to diverge and separate ... all sorts of 
things compel men to do that. Roger married, and now 
Gilbert and Ninian are soldiers. ...” 

“I feel proud and afraid,” Mrs. Graham said. “I’m 
glad that Ninian has joined ... I think I should hate it 
if he hadn’t . .. . and yet I wish too that . . . that he 
weren’t in it. I’m not much of a patriot, Henry. I love 
my son more than I love my country. I ’ve never been able 
to understand those women one reads about who offer their 
sons gladly. I don ’t offer Ninian gladly. I offer him . . . 
that’s all. I know that men have to defend their country, 
and I love England and I ’m proud to be English . . . but 
when I’ve said all that, it’s very little when I remember 
that I love Ninian. I suppose that that’s a selfish thing to 
say . . . but I don’t care whether it is or not ! . . She 
stopped for a moment or two, and then, with a change of 
voice, she said, “Do you think the war will last long, 
Henry ? ’ ’ 

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Nobody seems able to 
form any estimate. When it began I thought it couldn’t 


458 


CHANGING WINDS 


possibly last for longer than two months, but it looks like 
going on for a very long time yet. We move forward and 
we move back . . . and more men are killed. That’s 
the only result of anything at present ! ’ ’ 

“It’s strange,” she murmured, “how indifferent one be- 
comes to the death lists. I thought my heart would break 
when I saw the first Devon casualties, but now one simply 
doesn’t feel anything ... just a vague regret. Some- 
times I think I’m growing callous. I can’t feel anything 
when I read that thousands of men have been killed and 
wounded. It’s almost as if I were saying to myself, ‘Is 
that all? Weren’t there more? . . .’ I’m not the only 
one like that. People don’t like to admit it, but I’ve heard 
people confessing ... I confess myself . . . that I get a 
. . . kind of shocked pleasure out of a big casualty list! 

. . . Oh, isn’t it disgusting, Henry? One gets more and 
more coarse every day, less sensitive I . . . ” 

“Yes,” he said, nodding his head and staring into the 
fire which was now burning down. 

And everywhere, it seemed to him, that coarsening proc- 
ess was going on, a persistent blunting of the feelings, 
an itching desire for more and grimmer and bloodier de- 
tails. One saw it operating in kindly women who visited 
soldiers in hospital or took them for drives ... an uncon- 
trollable wish to hear the ghastlier things, a greedy anxiety 
for “experiences.” . . . And the soldiers loathed these pry- 
ing women in whom lust had taken a new turn: the love 
lust had turned to blood lust, and those who had formerly 
itched for men (and even those who had not) itched now 
for horrors, more and more horrors. . . . “Tell me, now,” 
they would say, “did you kill any Germans? I suppose 
you saw some awful things. ...” 

One saw this coarsening process operating on men with 
incredible swiftness. Their tastes became edgeless . . . 
they entertained themselves with big, splashy things, asking 
for noise and glare and an inchoate massing of colour, and 
crowds and crowds of bare girls. There was a demand for 


CHANGING WINDS 


459 


Nakedness, not the nakedness of cleanly, natural things, 
but the Nakedness that is partly covered, the Nakedness 
that hints at Nakedness. . . . 

“That’s inevitable, I suppose,” Henry thought to him- 
self. 

The sloppier journalists made a cult of blasphemy and 
foul speech. The drill-sergeant was regarded as the most 
entertaining of humourists, and decent men who had never 
done more than the normal and healthy amount of swear- 
ing, began to believe that it was impossible to be manly 
unless one bloodied every time one spoke: and swearing, 
which is a good and wholesome and manly and picturesque 
thing, suddenly became like the gibbering of an idiot. . . . 
One was led to believe that the drill-sergeant spent his time 
in ordering men to “bloody well form bloody fours!” It 
was immaterial to the sloppier journalists that the drill- 
sergeant did not do anything of the sort . . . and so the 
legend grew, of a great Army going into battle, not with 
the old English war-cries on their lips or with new cries 
as noble, but with “Bloody!” for their watch-word, and 
“Who were you With Last Night?” for their war-song. . . . 


6 

“I often wonder what things will be like when the war 
is over,” Mrs. Graham said. “Men can’t live like that 
without some permanent effect. Their habits will be 
rougher, more elementary, I suppose, and they’ll value life 
less highly. I don’t see how they can help it. You can’t 
see men killed in that careless way . . . and feel any sanc- 
tity about life. I think life will be harsher for women 
after the war than it was before. ...” 

She remembered that Ninian’s father had always de- 
clared that the Franco-German War had brutalised Ger- 
many. 

“He’d lived in Germany for a long while,” she said, 


460 


CHANGING WINDS 


^ ‘ and people admitted that Germany had changed after the 
War . . . grown coarser and less kindly!.. . 

They talked on in this strain until the clock chimed 
twelve. The storm still blew over the house, but the rain 
had ceased, and when they looked out of the window, they 
could see a rift in the clouds, through which the moon tore 
her way. 

“Good-night, Henry, she said, bending towards him, 
and he kissed her cheek and then opened the door for her. 

‘ ‘ Good-night ! ’ ^ he said. 


7 

Ninian came home on the next day, and when they had 
told him the news of Henry ’s engagement to Mary, he was 
full of cheers. “ Good 1 ’’ he said. “Now I shall be able to 
keep you in order, young fellow. I shall be a Rela- 
tion! . . 

‘ ‘ Oh, I Ve a note for you, ’ ^ he exclaimed, as they drove 
home. “It’s from Gilbert. I met him in town. He’ll 
be on his way out before I get back. He’d like to have 
come down here, but he couldn’t manage it. He sent his 
love to you, Mary, and you, mother! He looks jolly fit 
. . . never seen him look fitter ! ’ ’ 

He handed Gilbert’s note to Henry who put it in his 
pocket. He would read it, he told himself, when he was 
alone. 

“We’re hopping off to France next week,” Ninian said. 
“I suppose,” he added, turning again to Henry, “you saw 
that Jimphy Jayne was killed. Rough luck, wasn’t it? 1 
met a fellow who was in his regiment . . . home on sick- 
leave . . . and he says Jimphy fought like fifty. Gilbert 
says Cecily’s bearing up wonderfully!” 

“He’s seen her then?” Henry asked. 

“Yes. She met him in the street . . . and as he says, 
she’s bearing up wonderfully. He didn’t say a great deal, 
but I imagine he didn’t admire the attitude much. Rum 


CHANGING WINDS 


461 


woman, Cecily!” He had grown together more since he 
had been to South America, and his figure, that was always 
loose-looking and a little hulking, had been tightened up 
by his training. 

“I don^t like your moustache, Ninian,” his mother said, 
looking with disfavour at the “tooth-brush” on his upper 
lip. 

“Nor do I,” he replied, “but you have to wear something 
on your face . . . they don’t think you can fight if you 
don ’t . . . and this sort of thing is the least a chap can do 
for his king and country. When are you two going to get 
married ? ’ ’ 

His conversation jumped about like a squib. 

“Oh, not yet,” Mrs. Graham hurriedly exclaimed. 
“There’s plenty of time. ...” 

“I should like to get married at once,” said Henry. 

“No, not yet,” Mrs. Graham insisted. “I won’t be left 
alone yet awhile. ...” 

There was a learned discourse from Ninian on lengthy 
engagements which filled the time until the carriage drove 
up to Boveyhayne House, where it was dropped as sud- 
denly as it was begun. 

Indoors, Henry read Gilbert’s letter. 

“If 2/ dear Quinny/’ he wrote, “/’m writing this in Soho 
with a pen that was made in hell.” Then there was a 
splutter of ink. There,” the letter went on, ^^thaVs the 
sort of thing it does. I believe this pen was brought to 
Soho by the first Frenchman to open a cafe here, and it^s 
been handed down from proprietor to proprietor ever since. 
Ninian and I have been dining together, and as he^s going 
down to Boveyhayne to-morrow, I thought I might as well 
write to you because I shanH see you again for a while. 
Vm off to Gallipoli in a day or two. I dined with Roger 
and Rachel last night, and they told me that you looked 
rather pipped before you went to Devonshire. I hope 
you^ll soon be all right again. I wish we coidd have met, 


m 


CHANGING WINDS 


hut it canH he helped. We must just meet when we can. 
It seems a very long while, doesn’t it, since we were at 
Tre’Arrdur together? It’ll he jolly to he there again when 
the war’s over. You’ve no idea how interested I’ve be- 
come in this joh, far more interested than I ever imagined 
I should he. And I’ve changed very largely in my atti- 
tude towards the War. I * joined up’ chiefly because I felt 
an uncontrollable love for England that made me want to 
do things that were repugnant to me, and also because I 
thought that the Germans had behaved very scurvily to the 
Belgians; hut I don’t feel those emotions now particularly. 
I do, of course, feel proud of England, and the sight of a 
hedgerow makes me want to get up on my hindlegs and 
cheer, hut I’ve got something else now that had never 
entered into my calculations at all .. . and that is an ex- 
traordinary pride in my regiment and a strong desire to 
he worthy of it. I’ve just been reading a hook about it, a 
history of the regiment, and it’s left me with a sense of 
inheritance ... as I should feel if I were the heir of an 
old estate. This thing has a history and a tradition which 
gives me a feeling of pride and, perhaps more than that, 
a sense of responsibility. . . . *You mustn't let it down’ 
I keep telling myself, and I feel about all the men who 
served in the regiment from the time it was formed, that 
they are my forefathers, so to speak. I feel their ghosts 
about me, not the alarming sort of spook, but friendly, 
sympathetic ghosts, and I imagine them saying to me, 
* Sergeant Farlow, you’ve got to live up to us!’ I’ve not 
told any one else about this, because I’m afraid of being 
called a sloppy ass .. . and perhaps it is sloppy . . . but 
you’ll understand what I feel, so I don’t mind telling you. 
I shall write to you as often as I can, and you must write 
to me and tell me what you’re doing. I wish we could have 
gone out together. Sometimes I get a creepy-crawly sort 
of feeling that nearly turns me inside out . . . a feeling 
that this is good-bye for good, but I suppose most fellows 
get that just before they go out. I began another play 


CHANGING WINDS 


m 


about a month ago, and I think it will he good, much better 
than anything else I’ve done. 1 wish 1 had time to finish 
it before leaving home. This is rather a mess of a letter, 
and I must chuck it now, for Ninian is getting tied up in 
an effort to cultivate a cordial understanding with the 
waiter, and I shall have to rescue them both or there’ll be 
a rupture between the Allies. Give my love to Mary and 
Mrs. Graham. I’d have gone to Boveyhayne to see them 
if 1 possibly could, tell them. So long, old chap! 

Yours Ever, 

Gilbert Farlow.” 

He showed the letter to Mary, and as he gave it to her, 
he felt a new pleasure in his love for her, the pleasure 
of sharing things, of having confidences together. 

“Gilbert’s a dear,” she said, when she had finished read- 
ing the letter. “It would be awfully hard not to be fond 
of him!” 

He took the letter and put it in his pocket, and then he 
put his arm in Mary’s and led her to the garden where the 
spring flowers were blowing. “I’ve had great luck,” he 
said. “I have Gilbert for my friend and I have you, Mary, 
to be my wife, and I don’t know that I deserve either!” 

^ ^ Silly Quinny ! ’ ’ she said affectionately. 

8 

They spent the days of Ninian ’s leave in visiting all the 
familiar places about Boveyhayne. It seemed almost that 
Ninian could not see enough of them. He would rise early, 
rousing them with insistent shouts, and urge them to make 
haste and prepare for a long walk; and all day they 
tramped along the roads, up the combes and down the 
combes, over commons, through woods, lingering in the 
lanes to pluck the wildflowers that grew profusely in the 
hedgerows, or listening to the mating birds that flew con- 
tinually about them. They walked along the Roman Road 


464 


CHANGING WINDS 


to Lyme Regis in the east, and along the Roman Road again 
to Sidmouth in the west, returning in the dark, tired and 
hungry; and sometimes they went into the roadside pub- 
lic-houses because of the warm, comfortable smell they had, 
and because they liked to listen to the slow, burring voices 
of the labourers as they drank their beer and cider and 
talked of the day’s doings. There was a corner of the 
Common, near the edge of the cliff, where they could lie 
when the sun was w^arm, and look out over the Channel to 
where the Brixham trawlers lay in a line along the horizon. 
Westwards, the red clay cliffs ran up and down in steeply 
undulating lines as far as they could see, and near at hand, 
in a wide valley beyond the gloomy combe that leads to 
Salcombe Regis, they could very plainly see the front of 
Sidmouth. In the east, they could look up the wooded 
valley of the Axe, and, beyond the vari-coloured Haven 
Cliff, see the Dorset Hills that huddled Charmouth and 
Bridport, and further out, like an island in mist, the high 
reach of Portland Bill. . . . 

In this corner of the Common, they spent the last day 
of Ninian’s leave. Behind them was a great stretch of 
gorse in bloom, and brown bracken, mingled with new green 
fronds, from which larks sprang up, singing and soaring. 
They had eaten sandwiches on the Common, and in the 
afternoon, had climbed down the steep side of the combe to 
a farm to tea, and, then they had climbed up the combe 
again, and had sat in their corner, watching the Boveyhayne 
trawlers blowing home ; and as they sat there, they became 
very quiet. In this solitude and peace, the outrage of war 
seemed to have no meaning. . . . 

Ninian stirred slightly. He raised himself on his elbow 
and looked about him. . . . 

Let’s go home,” he said quickly, getting up as he 
spoke. He went to his mother and helped her to rise, and 
when she was standing up, he took her arm and drew it 
through his, and led her towards the village ; and when they 
had gone up the grassy path through the bracken, and were 


CHANGING WINDS 465 

well on the way home, Mary and Henry followed after 
them. 

“Ninian feels things more than he admits,’^ Henry whis- 
pered to her. 


9 

They made poor attempts at gaiety that night, and 
Ninian tried to make oratory about Engineers. He divided 
his discourse into two parts: one insisting that the war 
would be won by engineering feats ; the other insisting that 
it might be lost because of the contempt of most of the 
military men for Engineers, which, Ninian said, was an- 
other word for Brains. “They don’t think we’re gentle- 
men,” he said. “I met a ‘dug-out’ last week, and he was 
snorting about the Engineers . . . hadn’t a happorth of 
brains in his skull, the ass . . . and I asked him why it 
was that he thought so little of them. Do you know what 
he said? ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘they’re always readin’ books an’ 
. . . an’ inventin’ things!’ That’s the kind of chap we’ve 
got to endure! Isn’t he priceless? I very nearly told 
him he ought to be embalmed . . . only I thought to myself 
he’d think that was the sort of remark an engineer would 
make. Plucky old devil, of course, but nothing in his 
head. If you shook it, it wouldn’t rattle! ... He seemed 
to think he’d only got to say, ‘Now, then, boys, give ’em 
hell!’ and the Germans ’ud just melt away. As I said 
afterwards, it’s all very well, to say ‘Give ’em hell,’ but 
you can’t give it to ’em, if you don’t know what it’s 
like! . . 

But the oratory failed, and the gaiety fizzled out, and 
after a while Mrs. Graham, finding the silence and her 
thoughts insupportable, left them and went to bed. 

“Come and say ‘Good-night’ to me,” she said to Ninian 
as she left the room. 

“All right, mother!” he answered. 

He tried to take up the theme of engineering again. 


466 


CHANGING WINDS 


“It^s no good trying to chivy Germans in the way you 
chivy foxes. You’ve got to think, and think hard. That’s 
where we come in! . . But it was a poor effort, and he 
abandoned it quickly. 

“I think,” he said, “I’ll go up and say ‘Good-night’ to 
mother. You two ’ll see to things ! ...” 

“Kighto, Ninian,” Henry answered. 

Mary came and sat beside him when Ninian had gone. 

“I’m trying to feel proud,” she said, “but. ...” 

“Don’t you feel proud?” he asked, fondling her. 

“No. I’m anxious. It would hurt mother terribly if 
anything were to happen to Ninian,” she answered. 

“Nothing will happen to him. ...” 

One said that just because it was comforting. 

“Quinny,” she said, drawing herself up to him and 
leaning her elbows on his knees, ‘ ‘ do you love me really and 
truly? ...” 

He put his arms quickly about her, and drew her close 
to him, and kissed her passionately. 

“But you haven’t loved only me,” she said, freeing 
herself. 

He did not answer. 

“I’ve never loved any one but you,” she went on. “I 
haven’t been able to love any one but you. I’ve tried to 
love some one else . . . tried very hard ! ’ ’ 

“Who was it?” he asked. 

“No one you knew. It was after I’d seen you with Lady 
Cecily Jayne. I was jealous, Quinny! ...” 

“My dear,” he said, flattered by the oneness of her love 
for him. 

“But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I suppose I’m rather 
limited!” She made a wry smile as she spoke. ‘“I felt 
stupid beside her. She talked so easily, and I couldn’t 
think of anything to say. You must have thought I was a 
fool, Quinny!” 

“No, Mary! . . .” 

“Oh, but I was. I got stupider and stupider, and the 


CHANGING WINDS 


467 


more I thought of how stupid I was, the stupider I got. I 
could have cried with vexation. Do you remember Gil- 
bert’s party ... I mean when it was over and we were 
going home?” 

‘‘Yes.” 

“I prayed that you’d come with mother and me. I 
thought Ninian would go with mother, and you’d go with 
me . . . but you didn’t!” 

“I rememW,” he answered. “I wanted to go with 
you. . . .” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“Some one came up ... I’ve forgotten . . . something 
happened, and so I didn’t. I wanted to, Mary!” 

“I thought then that you and I would never! . . . Why 
did you ask me to marry you, Quinny ? ’ ’ 

“Because I love you, Mary. ...” 

“But . . . did you mean to marry me or did you just 
. . . sort of . . . not thinking, I mean! . . . Oh, it’s 
awf ’lly hard to say what’s in my mind, but I want to know 
whether you love me really and truly, Quinny, or only 
just asked me to marry you impulsively . . . when you 
weren’t thinking?” 

“I came here loving you, Mary. I didn’t mean to tell 
you about it so soon as I did . . . that was impulse ... I 
couldn’t help it . . . the moment I saw you as the train 
came into the station, I felt that I must ask you at once. 
It would have been rather awkward if you’d said, ‘No.’ I 
suppose I should have had to go straight back to London 
again! . . . But I came here loving you. I’ve loved you 
all the time . . . even when I wasn’t thinking of you, but 
of some one else. I’ve come back to you always in my 
thoughts! ...” 

“Do you remember,” she said, “the first time you asked 
me to marry you, Quinny?” 

“Yes.” 

“I’ve meant it ever since then. You hurt me when you 
went to Ireland and didn’t answer my letter. ...” 


468 


CHANGING WINDS 


“I know!” he exclaimed. 

“How do you know?” 

“I just know. And when I talked to you about it, that 
time in Bloomsbury when you and Mrs. Graham and Kachel 
came to dine with us. . . .” 

“I made fun of it, didn^t I? But I had to, Quinny. 
You’d been unkind, and I had to make some sort of a show, 
hadn’t I? I had to keep my pride if I couldn’t keep any- 
thing else.” 

“We’ve been stupid, both of us.” 

“You have,” she retorted. 

“I have,” he said. “I’ve been frightfully stupid. 
That’s what puzzles me. I’m clear-sighted enough about 
the people I make up in my books. The critics insist on my 
understanding of human motives, and I know that I have 
that understanding. I can get right inside my characters, 
and I know them through and through . . . but I’m as 
stupid as a sheep about myself and about you and . . . 
living people. I suppose I exhaust all my understanding 
on my books!” 

“Well, it doesn’t matter, Quinny, dear,” she said. “I’ll 
understand for the two of us! . . .” 


10 

In the morning, Ninian went away. They drove to Whit- 
combe Station with him and saw him off. They had been 
anxious about Mrs. Graham and dubious of her endurance 
at the moment of parting . . . but she had insisted on going 
to the station, and so they had not persisted in their per- 
suasions. And she had held herself proudly. 

“Good-bye, my dear,” she said, hugging Ninian tightly, 
and smiling at him. “You’ll write to me . . . often!” 

‘ ‘ Every day, ’ ’ he replied. “ If I can ! ’ ’ 

It had been difficult to fill in the few moments between 
their arrival at the station and the departure of the train. 


CHANGING WINDS 


469 


They said little empty things . . . repeated them . . . and 
then were silent. . . . 

Then the train began to move, and Mrs. Graham, snatch- 
ing quickly at him, had kissed him as he was carried off. 
They stood at the end of the platform, watching the train 
driving quickly up the valley until it stopped at Coly. 
Then they heard the whistle of the engine, and saw the 
smoke curling up, and again the train moved on, and then 
they could see it no more. 

‘ ^ We T1 walk home, ’ ' Mary whispered to Henry. ‘ ‘ She ^d 
much better go back by herself 

And so they left her, still smiling, though now and then, 
her hands trembled. 


THE EIGHTH CHAPTER 


1 

A MONTH after Gilbert and Ninian had left England, 
Henry went to London for a couple of days on business 
connected with his books. Mrs. Graham had asked him to 
return to Boveyhayne instead of going to Ireland, until he 
was fully well again, and he had gladly accepted her invi- 
tation. He had written a few pages of a new book that 
pleased him, and he was anxious to complete the story be- 
fore he entered the Army. Writing irked him, but he could 
not abstain from writing . . . some demon drove him to it, 
forcing him to his desk when all his desire was to be out 
in the lanes with Mary or sailing about the bay with Tom 
Yeo and Jim Rattenbury. There were times when he 
loathed this labour of writing which came between him and 
the pleasure of living, so that he sometimes saw fox- 
gloves and bluebells and primroses and violets and wild 
daffodils, not as the careless beauty of a Devonshire lane, 
but as picturesque material for a description in one of his 
chapters. And his beastly creatures would not lie still in 
his study until he returned to attend to them, but insisted 
on following him wherever he went, thrusting themselves 
upon his notice continually, whether the time was oppor- 
tune or not. He would walk with Mary, perhaps to Hang- 
man’s Stone, and suddenly he would hear her saying, 
‘ ‘ What are you thinking of, Quinny ? ’ ’ and he would come 
out of his silence with a start, and say, ‘‘Oh, my book, 
Mary!” and find that he had been walking by her side, 
unaware of her, unaware of anything but these abominable 
paper people who deluged his mind with their being 

470 


CHANGING WINDS 


471 


. . . and when they got to Hangman's Stone, he thought 
always, ‘ ‘ What a good title for a story ! ' ’ 

‘‘But I can’t leave it alone,” he would say to himself, 
and then he would compare himself to a drunkard, eager 
to be quit of his drink, but unable to conquer his craving. 
And he had pride in it, too. That was what distinguished 
him from the drunkard and the drug-taker. They had no 
pride in their drunkenness or their drugged senses, but he 
had pride in his books, and constantly in his mind was 
the desire that before he joined the Army, he should leave 
another book behind him, that his life should be expressed 
substantially in a number of novels, so that if he should die 
in battle, he would have left something by which men 
might remember him. 

He had talked to Mary about his position, but she had 
insisted that this was a decision he must make for himself. 
Her view, and the view of her mother, was that a woman 
ought not to take the responsibility of urging a man to 
endure the horror and danger of such a war as this. 
“Women can’t go into the trenches themselves,” Mrs. Gra- 
ham said, “and they’ve no right to ask any one else to go !” 
That was what his father had said. 

“But somebody must go, and there are people who have 
to be told about things,” he objected. 

“I think,” Mrs. Graham answered, “I’d rather be killed 
than be defended by a man who was white-feathered into 
doing it, and I know I should never be happy again if I’d 
nagged at a man until he joined the Army, and he was 
killed. ... I think that some women will have haunted 
minds after this War!” 

“It’s the Government’s job to say who shall go and who 
shall stay,” Mary added. “That’s what they’re there for, 
and it’s mean of them to shuffle out of their responsibility 
and let a lot of flappers and old maids do their work for 
them!” 

Then their talk had taken a new turn, and in the end it 
was settled that Mary and he were to be married when the 


m 


CHANGING WINDS 


new book was finished, and then he would join the Army. 
There had been a difficulty with Mrs. Graham, but Mary 
over-ruled her. 

* ‘ I won ’t let him go until he marries me, ’ ^ she said, shut- 
ting her lips firmly and looking very resolutely at her 
mother. 

“Koger and I might go in together,’^ Henry suggested. 
“I had a letter from him saying he thought he would join 
soon. Rachel’s going to live in the country. ...” 

“She can come here if she likes,” Mrs. Graham inter- 
jected. “You’d better tell her that when you go to town. 
She can stay with us until the war’s over. ...” 

“There’s the baby, oi course!” Henry reminded her. 

“I know,” she answered. “I’d like to hear a baby in 
this house again. ...” 


2 

London was strangely sensitive, easily exalted, easily de- 
pressed, listening avidly to rumours, even when they were 
clearly absurd. It was the least English of the cities, far, 
far less English than the villages and country towns. Lon- 
don’s nerves were often jangled, but the nerves of Bovey- 
hayne were never jangled. London jumped up and down 
like a Jack-in-the-box, but Boveyhayne moved steadily on. 
There were times when London was so un-English as to be- 
lieve that England might be beaten . . . but Boveyhayne 
never imagined that for a moment. Boveyhayne did not 
think of the defeat of England, because it had never oc- 
curred to Boveyha3nae that England could be beaten. Old 
Widger would sometimes say, “They Germans be cun- 
ning!” or “Us ’ll ’ave to ’it a bit ’arder avore us knocks 
’un out!” but Old Widger never imagined for a moment 
that “ ’un,” as he always called the Kaiser, would not 
sooner or later get knocked out, and so he went on with 
his work, pausing now and then to say, “ ’Er’s a reg’lat 
cunnin’ old varmint, ’er be!” almost with as much ad- 


CHANGING WINDS 


m 


miration as if he were talking of a fox or an otter that had 
eluded the hounds many times. But the cunningest fox 
falls to the hounds in the end of some chase, and Widger 
did not doubt that “Keyser’’ would fall, too. Bovey- 
hayne, was very English in its reserves and its dignity. 
London might squeal for reprisals, but Boveyhayne never 
squealed. When the Germans torpedoed a merchant ship, 
Old Widger said, “It bain’t very manly, be it, sir?^’ and 
that was all. Old Widger was not indifferent or without 
imagination . . . but he had self-respect, and he could not 
squeal like a frantic rabbit even when he was in pain. He 
could hit, and he could hit hard, but he did not care to 
claw and scratch and bite! . . . 

Henry disliked London then, but he comforted himself 
with the thought that it resembled all capital cities, that 
its population was not a native population, but one that 
shifted and changed and had no tradition. Old Widger 
had lived in the same cottage all his life: his father had 
lived there too ; and his family, for several generations be- 
fore his father, had lived and worked in Boveyhayne. They 
had habits and customs so old that no one knew the mean- 
ing of them. When Widger ’s wife died, Widger and his 
family had gone to church on the Sunday after her burial, 
as all the Boveyhayne bereaved do, and had sat through 
the service, taking no part in it, neither kneeling to pray 
nor rising to sing nor responding to the invocations. But 
Old Widger did not know why he had behaved in that 
fashion, nor did any one in Boveyhayne. “Don’t seem 
no sense in it,” he said, but nevertheless he did it, and 
nothing on earth would have prevented him from doing 
it. It was the custom. . . . 

But there was no custom in London. There were no 
habits, no traditions, nothing to hold on to in times of 
crisis or distress. There was no one in London who had 
been born and had spent all his life in one house, in a 
house, too, in which his father had been born and had lived 
and had died. People took a house for three years . . . 


474 


CHANGING WINDS 


and then moved to another one. Locality had no meaning 
for them . . . they hardly knew the names of their neigh- 
bours . . . they were not surrounded by cousins . . . the 
roads and streets had no meaning or memories for them 
. . . they were just thoroughfares, passages along which 
one walked or drove to a railway station or a shopping 
centre. . . . 

And while Old Widger, if the thought had been put into 
his mind, would stoutly have answered, ‘‘Us ain’t never 
been beat!” a Londoner would have answered, “My God, 
supposing we are beaten? ...” Victory might be long in 
being won. Widger would admit that. But “us ain’t never 
been beat” he would maintain. The Londoner would ad- 
mit that victory might never be won . . . and in making 
the admission, de-nationalised himself. Widger, obstinate, 
immovable, imperturbable, kindly, unvengeful and reso- 
lute, was English to the marrow . . . and when Henry 
thought of England as a conquering country, he thought 
of it as a nation of Widgers, not as a nation of Cockneys. 

“And it is a nation of Widgers,” he said to himself. 
“The Cockneys shout more, print more, and they squeal a 
lot, but the Widgers are in the majority!” 

It was not until night fell that Henry’s love of London 
was restored. When the sky-signs were put out, and the 
shop-lights were diminished, and the running flames an- 
nouncing the merits of this one’s whisky and that one’s 
tea were quenched, London became again an ancient city 
that a man could love. . . . 

“It’s worth fighting for?” Henry murmured to him- 
self as he stood on the terrace of Trafalgar Square, before 
the National Gallery, and looked about him at the dusk- 
softened outlines and the rich highways of shadows. One 
would not fight for the England that squealed through the 
ha’penny papers . . . one would gladly throttle that Eng- 
land . . . one would not fight for the England of the Stock 
Broker and the Mill Owner . . . but one would fight hard, 


CHANGING WINDS 


475 


fight until death, for the England of Old Widger and the 
England of this darkened, dignified and beautiful Lon- 
don. 


3 

He had attended to his business with his publishers, 
and was walking along the Strand towards Charing Cross, 
when he became aware of a thrill of emotion run- 
ning through the crowd that stood on either side of the 
road. 

“What is itr’ he said to a bystander. 

“The wounded]^’ was the answer. 

He pressed forward, and stood on the edge of the pave- 
ment, and as he did so, the ambulances came out of the 
station. There was a moment of deep, hurting silence, 
and then came cheers and waving handkerchiefs and sobs. 
. . . There was a parson standing at Henry’s elbow, and 
he cheered as if he were intoning . . . little sterilised 
hurrahs . . . and there was a woman who murmured con- 
tinually, “Oh, God bless them! God bless them all!” 
while she cried openly, unrestrainedly. Unceasingly, the 
ambulances seemed to pass on to the hospitals, and the sol- 
diers, pale from their wounds and tired after their jour- 
ney by sea and train, lay back in queer disregard of the 
crowd that cheered them. Now and then, one moved his 
hand in greeting or smiled . . . but most of them were ir- 
responsive, dazed, perhaps hearing still the sound of the 
smashing artillery and the cries of the maimed and dying, 
unable to believe that they were back again in a place 
where there was no fighting, where men and women walked 
and talked and did their work and took their pleasure in 
disregard of death and a bloody and abrupt end. . . . 
There was a private motor-car in the middle of the pro- 
cession of ambulances, and inside it was a wounded officer 
with his wife . . . and she did not care who looked on nor 


476 


CHANGING WINDS 


what was said, she held him in her arms and kissed him 
and would not let him go. . . . 

“Oh, my God,’’ Henry murmured to himself, as the 
cars went by, “I can’t bear this! ...” 

He wanted to kill Germans ... it seemed to him then 
that nothing else mattered but to kill Germans . . . that 
one must put aside the generous beliefs, the kindly inten- 
tions, one ’s work, one ’s faith, everything . . . and kill Ger- 
mans; unceasingly, without relenting . . . kill Germans; 
that for every wound these men bore, for every drop of 
blood they had lost, for every pang they had endured, for 
every tear that their women had shed . . . one must kill 
Germans. 

He withdrew from the crowd. Somewhere near at hand, 
there was a recruiting office. He remembered to have seen 
a large guiding sign outside St. Martin’s Church. He 
would go there! . . . 

He had to wait until the procession of motor-ambu- 
lances had passed by, and then he crossed the street and 
went to find the recruiting office. “I’m excited,” he said 
to himself. “I’m full of emotion. That’s what I am. 
I’m over- wrought. Those soldiers! ...” 

In his mind, he could see the woman in the motor-car, 
hugging her wounded husband . . . and a soldier, lying 
on a stretcher in an ambulance, with his head swathed in 
bandages, near a little window . . . feebly trying to wave 
his hand to the crowd. . . . 

“It’s no good being sloppy,” he told himself. “One 
can’t win a war by . . . spilling over. One’s got to keep 
one’s head!” 

He turned the corner of the Church and saw the re- 
cruiting office, covered with posters, in a narrow lane. He 
walked towards it, slackening his pace as he did so . . . 
and then he walked past it. 

“I can’t go in now,” he thought. “I must see Koger 
first . . . and there’s the book to finish . . . and 
Mary! . . 


CHANGING WINDS 


477 


4 

He had seen Roger and Rachel, and was now on his way 
back to Boveyhayne. . . . Roger had agreed that he would 
not join without Henry. '‘I can’t go yet,” he had said. 
“When I’ve saved a little more. I’ll go in. I want to leave 
Rachel and Eleanor as secure as I can ! ’ ’ 

There was another boom in recruiting just then, follow- 
ing on another German outrage. 

“It’ll take them some time to shape the crowd they’re 
getting now,” Roger had said, “so that we won’t be hin- 
dering them if we hang back for a while. I should have 
thought you’d want to go into an Irish regiment, Quinny !” 

“It doesn’t very much matter, does it, what the regi- 
ment is ? ” Henry had answered. ‘ ‘ The labels are more or 
less meaningless now. And I’d like to be with some one I 
know ! ’ ’ 

He had given Mrs. Graham’s invitation to Rachel, and 
Rachel had sent her thanks to Mrs. Graham. She would 
be glad to go to Boveyhayne when everything was settled. 

Things were clearer now. In a little while, Mary and he 
would be married. Then he could go with Roger. He 
would have to see his lawyers in Dublin . . . there would 
be a marriage settlement to make and business connected 
with the estate to settle . . . and that done, and his book 
ready for the printers, he would be free. 

“I wish the next two months were over,” he said to him- 
self. 

He had to change at Salisbury, and while he was wait- 
ing for the slow train to Exeter, he met Mullally. He had 
looked at him, vaguely wondering who he was and why his 
face should seem familiar, until recollection had come to 
him, and then, with a return of the old aversion, he had 
turned away, hoping that Mullally had not seen or recog- 
nised him. But Mullally had recognised him, and, unable 
as ever to understand that his acquaintance was not 
wanted, he came to Henry and held out his hand. 


478 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘ ‘ I thought it was you, ’ ’ he said. ^ ‘ I wasn ’t sure at first, 
but when you turned away . . . there was something about 
your back that was familiar ... I knew it was you. How 
are you? I haven ^t seen you since you left Rumpell’s, 
though I Ve heard of you, of course, and read of you, too ! 
You’ve become quite well-known, haven’t you?” 

Henry smiled feebly, an unfriendly, unresponsive, mirth- 
less smile, as was his wont when he was in the presence 
of people whom he disliked. 

^‘I’ve often wondered about you,” Mullally went on, un- 
embarrassed by Henry’s obvious wish to get away from 
him. 

*‘Oh, yes,” Henry replied, saying to himself, wish 
to God my train would come in!” 

“Yes, I’ve often wondered about you,” Mullally went on. 
“And about Farlow and Graham and Carey. You were 
great friends, you four, weren’t you? I’d have called you 
^The Heavenly Twins’ only there were four of you, and 
‘quadruplets’ is a difficult word for a nickname, don’t you 
think? I mean to say ‘The Heavenly Quadruplets’ 
doesn’t sound nearly so neat as ‘The Heavenly Twins.’ 
It’s funnier, of course! What’s become of them all? I 
saw somewhere that Farlow ’d written a play, but I didn’t 
see it. I’ve read one or two of your books, by the way. 
Quite good, I thought! What did you say’d become of 
them?” 

“Carey’s in London ... at the Bar,” Henry answered. 
“I’ve just been staying with him. He’s married! . . .” 

‘ ‘ Dear me ! And has he any . . . little ones ? ’ ’ 

Oh, that was like Mullally! He would be sure to say 
“little ones” when he meant “children.” 

“He has a daughter!” 

‘ ‘ Oh, indeed ! He must be very gratified. And Farlow 
and Graham, how are they, and what are they doing?” 

“ Farlow ’s in Gallipoli and Graham’s in France! . . .” 

“Oh, this dreadful war,” Mullally exclaimed, wrinkling 


CHANGING WINDS m 

his features. ‘‘I^m greatly opposed to it. IVe been ad- 
dressing meetings on the subject!’^ 

“Have you?” Henry asked with more interest than he 
had previously shown. 

“Yes, I’m totally opposed to it. All this secret diplo- 
macy and race for armaments . . . that’s at the bottom of 
it all. My dear Quinn, some members of the Cabinet have 
shares in armament works. It’s easy enough to see why 
we’re at war! . . 

Henry could not prevent himself from laughing. 

“Do you mean to say you think they got up the war on 
purpose so’s to get bigger dividends on their armament 
shares ? ’ ’ 

Mullally shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t wish to im- 
pute motives,” he said. “No, I should not care to do that. 
I believe in the good intentions of my fellow man, but all 
the same, it’s very peculiar. It looks bad! ...” 

“You always were a bloody fool, Mullally, and you’re a 
bloodier one now. Good afternoon!” said Henry, turn- 
ing to look at the train which was now entering the station. 

He hurried to secure a carriage, and while he was set- 
tling his bag on the rack, he heard the voice of Mullally 
bleating in his ear. 

“I’m going to Exeter, too,” he said. “I’ll just get in 
with you. I have a third class ticket, but if they ask for 
the excess, I can pay it!” 

“Oh, damn!” said Henry to himself. 

5 

“I can understand the difficulty you have in believing 
that people could behave so ... so basely,” Mullally said, 
as the train carried them out of Salisbury. 

“I don’t believe it at all,” Henry answered, “and I think 
that any one who does believe it is a malicious-minded ass !” 

“But they hold the shares . . . you can see the list of 


480 


CHANGING WINDS 


shareholders at Somerset House for yourself . . . and 
they ’ll, take the profits. I’m quite willing to believe in the 
goodness of the average man ... in fact, I’ve denounced 
the doctrine of Original Sin very forcibly before now . . . 
but I must say that there’s something very suspicious 
about this business. Very suspicious. And you know 
some of the soldiers are really rather! ...” 

“Rather what?” said Henry. 

“Well, I don’t like saying anything about anybody, but 
some of them are not all that they should be. They should 
set an example, and they don’t. I’ve heard some very 
startling things about the behaviour of the soldiers. Very 
startling things. I don’t want to say anything that may 
sound unpleasant, but I suggest that you should read the 
Report of the Registrar-General when it comes out. It 
will cause some consternation, I can promise you. Young 
women, Quinn, simply can’t be kept away from the sol- 
diers, and I’ve been told . . . well! ...” 

Again he shrugged his shoulders, and turned his palms 
upwards and raised his eyebrows. A Member of Parlia- 
ment had written to the Morning Post about it ... a Con- 
servative member of Parliament, not a Liberal or a Social- 
ist, mark you, but a Conservative. . . . 

“Two thousand cases expected in one town,” Mullally 
whispered. “Knows it for a fact. Seen the girls! . . .” 

Mullally proposed a calculation. They were to work out 
the number of unmarried girls who would shortly become 
mothers, using the Conservative M.P.’s letter as a basis of 
calculation. 

“Thousands and thousands,” he prophesied. “Hun- 
dreds of thousands. All illegitimate. I believe, of course, 
that we make too much fuss about the marriage laws, Quinn, 
but still . . . there are limits, don’t you think? I mean, 
we must make changes slowly, not in this . . . this drastic 
fashion. But what are you to expect? When the very 
Cabinet Ministers are proved to have shares in munition 


CHANGING WINDS 481 

works, is it any wonder that the common soldier runs 
riot? . . 

‘‘I get out at the next station,’^ said Henry. 

‘‘Do you?’^ said Mullally. “But I thought you didn’t 
change until you got to Whit combe Junction?” 

“I don’t,” said Henry, “but I get out at the next sta- 
tion!” 

“I see,” said Mullally. 

“About time,” Henry thought. 

6 

After dinner, he asked Mary to walk to the village with 
him. 

“Isn’t it late?” Mrs. Graham objected. 

“Oh, no,” he answered. “It’s a beautiful moonlight 
night, and I feel I want to stretch my legs. I’ve been 
cooped up in the train best part of the day. Come along, 
Mary!” 

“I’ll just get my coat,” she said. 

When they were ready, he put his arm in hers, and they 
walked down the long lane, past the copse and through the 
pine trees, to the village. 

“It’s very quiet to-night,” Mary said. 

“Extraordinarily still,” he answered. 

There was no one in the village street and there were 
no lights shining from any of the windows, except from the 
bedroom of a cottage near the sea. 

“They’ve all gone to bed very early, haven’t they?” he 
said, glancing about the deserted street. 

“But it isn’t early, Quinny,” she replied. “It’s quite 
late. It must be nearly ten o’clock. We had dinner much 
later to-night because your train was so long in getting in ! ” 

“Well, they’re missing a gorgeous night, all of them,” 
he exclaimed, holding her tightly. 

They walked to the fisherman’s shelter and stood against 


482 


CHANGING WINDS 


the iron rail on top of the low cliff. The moon had made a 
broad path of golden light across the bay, from the shin- 
gle to the pinnacle on the nearer of the two headlands, and 
they could see the golden water flowing through the hole 
in the cliff. 

‘‘I’d love to bathe now,” Mary said. “I’d love to swim 
all along that splash of moonlight to the caves and back 
again. ...” 

A belated sea-gull cried wearily overhead and then flew 
off to its nest in the cliffs. 

“The water’s awfully black looking outside the moon- 
light,” Henry exclaimed. 

“Ummm!” she answered. 

They shivered a little in the cold air, and instinctively 
they drew closer to each other. Beneath them, lying high 
on the shingle, were the trawlers, lying ready for the morn- 
ing when the fishermen would push them down into the sea. 

“Tom Yeo and Jim Rattenbury are going to have a 
motor put into their trawler,” Mary said. “It’ll make a 
lot of difference to them. They’ll be able to go out even 
when there isn’t any wind.” 

Henry did not answer. He had a strange sense of fear 
that was inexplicable to him. He seemed to be outside 
himself, outside his own fear, looking on at it and won- 
dering what had caused it. He felt as if something were 
pulling at him, trying to force him to look round . . . and 
he was afraid to look round. ... He shuddered violently. 

“Are you cold, Quinny?” Mary said anxiously, turning 
to him. 

“Yes,” he answered quickly, wishing to account for his 
sudden shivering in a way that would not alarm her. 
“We’d better go back! . . .” 

What was the matter? Why was he so suddenly afraid 
and so strangely afraid? If it had been dark, very dark, 
and he had been alone . . . but it was bright moonlight 
... so bright that one could almost see to read . . . and 
Mary was with him . . . and yet he was afraid to look 


CHANGING WINDS 


483 


round at the "White Cliff. Something inside him, apart 
from him, seemed to feel that if he looked up the long steep 
path over the White Cliff ... he would see something. 

‘ ‘ Come on, Mary ! ” he said, turning to go, and turning 
in such a way that he could not see the Cliff. 

They walked rapidly up the street. . . . ‘‘That’ll warm 
me,” he explained to Mary . . . and as he walked, he was 
afraid to look back. 

“What the devil’s the matter with me?” he kept saying 
to himself until they reached the end of the lane leading 
to the Manor. 

“You’re walking too quickly, Quinny !” Mary said, hold- 
ing back. 

“I’m sorry, dear,” he exclaimed, slackening his pace 
reluctantly. 

He had never had this sensation before ... as if a fear 
had been stuck on to him, a fear that was not part of his 
nature, a thing outside him trying to get inside him. . . . 
He forgot that Mary had complained of the rapidity with 
which he was walking, and he set off again. The pine 
trees had a black, ominous look, and the sound of the wind 
blowing through their needles was like continuous moan- 
ing. 

“Are you trying to win a race, Quinny?” Mary said. 

He laughed nervously. “No. I’m ... I’m sorry! . . .” 

As they passed the copse, he shut his eyes, and so he 
stumbled over the rough ground and almost fell. 

“What is it, Quinny?” Mary demanded, catching hold 
of him. 

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m tired, that’s all. . . .” 


7 

He shut the door behind him quickly, and fastened the 
bolts. Mary had gone into the drawing-room, and when 
he had secured the door, he followed her. 


484 < 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘Mother’s gone to bed,” she said, and then, going to 
him and putting her hands on his shoulder, she added, 
“What is it, Quinny? Something’s upset you. I know 
it has!” 

He looked at her for a few moments without speaking. 

“Tell me, please!” she insisted. 

He put his arm about her and led her to the armchair 
by the fire, and when she was seated, he sat down on the 
floor beside her. 

“I didn’t want to tell you until we got home,” he said. 
“I didn’t want to frighten you. ...” 

“What was it? Was there anything there? ...” 

“I don’t know what it was, Mary, but I suddenly felt 
frightened ... a queer kind of fright. I was afraid to 
look round for fear I should see something ... I don’t 
know what ... on the cliff. I felt that something wanted 
me to look round, and I wouldn’t. I didn’t dare to look 
round. All the way up the street, I felt that something 
wanted me to look round. ...I’m not afraid now ! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ How queer, ’ ’ she said in a low voice. 

“I’ve never felt anything like it before . . . half afraid 
and half not afraid! ...” 

He began to talk about Mullally. “He’s a toad, that 
fellow, ’ ’ he said, “an . . . an enlarged toad ! ’ ’ 

“I’m going to bed,” she interrupted. “Good-night, 
Quinny !” 

She bent her face to his. 

“Good-night, my dear!” he said, kissing her fondly. 


8 

Three days later, when he had almost forgotten his fright 
on the cliffs, he went down to the village to get the morning 
papers. 

“What’s the news,” he said to one of the villagers whom 
he met on the way. 


CHANGING WINDS 


485 


‘‘ ’Bout the same, sir. Don’t seem to be much ’appenin’ 
at present,” the man replied. 

He went on to the news agency and got the papers, and 
then, hastily glancing at the headlines for the more obvious 
news, he tucked the papers under his arm and went slowly 
hack to the Manor by another road than the one by which 
he had come into the village. There was a field with a 
hollow where one could lie in shelter and see the whole of 
the bay and the eastern cliffs in one direction, and the Axe 
Valley in another, and here he sat for a while, smoking and 
reading and now and then trying to follow the tortuous 
windings of the Axe as it came down the marsh to the sea. 

‘Hf Ninian were here,” he said to himself, ^‘he’d start 
making plans to straighten it out ! . . . ” 

He glanced through the war bulletins, with their terri- 
ble iteration of trenches taken and trenches lost. People 
read the war news carelessly now, almost wearily, so ac- 
customed had they become to the daily report of positions 
evacuated and positions retrieved, forgetting almost that at 
the taking or the losing of a trench, men lost their lives. 

‘‘There isn’t much in the paper this morning,” he said, 
and then he turned to a page of lesser news, and almost as 
he did so, his eye caught sight of Gilbert ’s name. His grip 
on the paper was so tight that he tore it. He stared at the 
paragraph with startling eyes, reading and re-reading it, 
as if he were unable to comprehend the meaning of the 
thing he read. . . . Then, as understanding came to him, he 
gaped about with vacant eyes. 

“Oh, my God!” he cried, “Gilbert’s been killed!” 

9 

He got up, half choking, and scrambled out of the field. 
A labourer greeted him, but he made no answer. He ran 
up the road, and as he ran, he cried to himself, “Gilbert’s 
dead ... it isn’t true ... it isn’t true! . . .” 

He thrust open the gate and ran swiftly up to the door. 


486 


CHANGING WINDS 


^‘Mary!^’ he shouted. ^‘Mary! Mary! 

She came running to him, followed by her mother. 

“What is it?’’ she cried, and her heart was full of fear. 

Mrs. Graham clutched at him. “It isn’t .. . it 
isn’t . . .” 

He sank down into a chair and buried his head 
in his hands. “Gilbert’s dead,” he said. “He’s been 
killed! . . .” 

Mary knelt beside him, and drew his head on to her 
shoulder. She did not speak. There was nothing that 
could be said. She knew that Gilbert and Henry had cared 
for each other as men seldom care . . . and no one, not 
even she, could bring comfort to the one who was left. So 
she just held him. . . . 


10 

Mrs. Graham had left them alone. Her fear had been for 
Ninian, and when she heard Gilbert’s name, her relief was 
such that she had hurried from the room lest Henry, 
stricken by the death of his friend, should see her face. 

“I know now,” he said when he was calmer, “what it 
was on the White Cliff. He wanted to tell me, Mary. He 
wanted to tell me . . . and I wouldn’t look round. Oh, my 
God, I wouldn’t look round!” 


THE NINTH CHAPTER 


1 

It was unbelievable that Gilbert was dead. In his mind, 
Henry could see him, careless, extravagant, always good- 
tempered and sometimes strangely wise and understanding 
. . . and he could not believe that he would never see him 
again, that all that youth and generosity and promise 
should be turned so untimely to corruption. Gilbert's 
friends would not even know where his grave was . . . 
they would not have the poor consolation of finding a place 
that was his, marked out from all the other places. . . . 
He had been seen, running forward . . . and then he was 
seen no more. . . . 

^‘Perhaps,’’ Henry said to comfort himself, ‘‘he^s been 
taken prisoner. We shall hear later on that he ’s been taken 
prisoner! . . 

He snatched at any hope. Men had been posted among 
the dead . . . and then, after a time of mourning, had 
come the news that they still lived. Perhaps Gilbert was 
lying somewhere . . . wounded . . . and after a while, 
news of him would come. Other men might die, but it was 
incredible that Gilbert should be killed. . . . 

He became obsessed with the belief that Gilbert still 
lived. He went about expecting to see him suddenly turn- 
ing a comer and shouting, “Hilloa, Quinny 1’^ At any mo- 
ment, a door might open, and Gilbert would walk in and 
say, “Well, coves There was a printed copy of “The 
Magic Casement in the house, and Henry would pick it up, 
and turn over the pages. . . . “But he can’t be dead,” he 
would say to himself, as he fingered the book. “It’s ab- 
surd! ...” Even when hope died, there came times when 

487 


488 


CHANGING WINDS 


the belief in Gilbert’s survival thrust itself into his mind. 
When the Lusitania was torpedoed, he said to himself, 
“Why, we saw her just after the war began, Gilbert and I, 
and we cheered! ...” 

The brutality of the w^ar smote him hard. In less than a 
year from the day when they had stood on the rocks at 
Tre’Arrdur Bay, lustily cheering as the great Atlantic 
liner sailed up the sea to the Mersey, Gilbert was dead and 
the proud ship was a wreck, sneakily destroyed. . . . 

Gilbert had left the beginning of a play behind him. He 
had regretted that he could not finish it before going out to 
the peninsula . . . had believed that in it he would create 
something finer and deeper than he had yet done . . . and 
now it would never reach completion. The mind that 
imagined it was no more than the rubbish of the fields when 
the harvest is gathered. . . . 

His own work became tasteless to him. He turned with 
disrelish from his manuscript. ^ ‘ What ’s the good of it, ’ ’ he 
said to himself, whenever he looked at it. He tried to put 
himself into communication with Gilbert’s spirit, remem- 
bering that night below the White Cliff, when, he now be- 
lieved, Gilbert had tried to tell him of his death. A month 
before, he would have ridiculed any one who suggested to 
him that he should attempt to speak to the dead. ‘ ‘ Spook- 
ery!” he would have said. But now, in his eagerness to 
atone, as he said, for his failure to respond when Gilbert 
had tried to speak to him, he put faith in things that, be- 
fore, would have seemed contemptible to him. But with 
all his will to believe, he could not call Gilbert to him. 
There was a blankness, a condemning silence. . . . 

“I failed my friend,” he groaned to himself once, 
“When he felt for me most, I ... I failed him!” 

2 

He had gone up to the Common with Mary, and had lain 
there, talking of Gilbert ... of what Gilbert had been 


CHANGING WINDS 


489 


doing this time a year ago ... of something that Gilbert 
had said once ... of an escapade at Rumpell’s . . . and 
then Mary and he had gone home across the fields. As 
they walked up the lane to the house, they saw a telegraph 
messenger ahead of them. They quickened their pace. 
There was an anxious, strained look on Mary’s face, and 
as the messenger, hearing them behind him, turned and 
stopped, she made a clutching movement with her hands. 
“Oh, Quinny!” she said, turning to him with frightened 
eyes. The boy waited until Henry went up to him, re- 
garding them both with curiosity. 

“Is it for us?” Henry asked, knowing that it was, and 
the boy nodded his head. “I’ll take it,” he went on. 
“It’ll save you the trouble of going up to the house!” 

“Thank you, sir!” the messenger said, and then he 
handed the telegram to Henry. “Is there any answer, 
sir?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” Henry replied. “We’ll . . . we’ll 
bring it down to the post-office, if there is ! ” 

He knew that there would not be any answer. . . . 

The hoy went oif, looking back at them now and then, 
over his shoulder. 

“Shall I open it, Mary?” Henry said. 

“Do you think? ...” She did not complete her sen- 
tence for she was afraid to utter the thought that was in her 
mind. 

“If it should be bad news,” Henry said, “we’d . . .we’d 
better prepare her for it ! ” 

They stood there, holding the telegram still unopened, as 
if they could not make a decision. . . . 

“Open it, Quinny!” Mary said at last, and he opened 
the buff envelope and took out the form. 

The Secretary for War regretted! . . . 

He looked up from the telegram, and saw that Mary was 
standing in a strained attitude, waiting for him to speak. 

“Is it . . . is it thatf^^ she said, almost in a whisper. 

He bowed his head. “Yes,” he said. 


490 


CHANGING WINDS 


She did not speak. She stood quite still, looking at him 
as if she were trying to find something, but did not know 
where to look for it. He moved nearer to her, and took 
hold of her hand and drew her close to him, and she lay 
quietly in his arms. . . . There was a bird singing very 
clearly over their heads, and suddenly, while they stood 
there, silently consoling each other, two wood pigeons flew 
out of the highest tree, making a great beating of wings as 
they flew off across the fields. There was a robin in the 
hedge, turning its head this way and that, and regarding 
them with curiosity. . . . 

She stirred, and then withdrew herself from his arms. 

‘‘We must go home,’^ she said, “and tell mother!” 


3 

Mrs. Graham was in the garden, and she came to the gate 
as she saw them approaching, waving her hand and smiling 
at them. 

“Will you tell her, Quinny,” Mary said, and she slack- 
ened her pace slightly and dropped behind him. 

He turned to look for her. “Come with me,” he said. 
“I can’t tell her . . . alone!” 

There was a chilly fear over both of them. They felt 
that this blow would strike her down, that she would not 
survive it. Ninian was the beginning and the end of her 
life. If Ninian were gone, everything was gone. This 
house, the farm, the fields were without purpose if Ninian 
were not there to own them. . . . They went slowly for- 
ward, and as they approached they saw her smile vanish, 
and a puzzled look come in its place. She had waved her 
hand and smiled at them, but they had not waved back to 
her, they had not answered her smile . . . and then she saw 
the telegram in Henry’s hand. She made a quick move- 
ment, opening the gate and coming rapidly to them. 

“What is it?” she said, hoarsely. 


CHANGING WINDS 


491 


He could not think of anything to say. . . . 

“It’s from the War Office, mother,” Mary said. 

He stood ready to put his arms about her and support 

her. . . . 

“Give it to me,” she said, holding out her hand for the 
telegram, and he passed it to her. 

They stood silently before her while she read it. Then 
Mary went close to her. ‘ ‘ Mother ! . . . ” she said. 

Mrs. Graham did not make any answer to Mary. She 
still held the telegram in her hands, and gazed at it, read- 
ing it over and over. . . . 

“Mother, dear!” Mary reached up, and put her arms 
about her mother’s neck. 

“Yes, Mary,” she answered very calmly. 

But Mary could not say any more. She buried her head 
on her mother’s shoulder, and the tears that she had been 
holding back, would not be held back any longer, and sobs 
burst from her that seemed as if they would choke her. 

“My dear,” said Mrs. Graham, raising Mary’s face to 
hers, “we must ... we must be brave!” 

She turned to Henry. “Take her in,” she said, “and 
. . . and comfort her!” 

He went to them, and put his arm about Mary, and led 
her to the house. “Won’t you come in, too?” he said, 
turning to Mrs. Graham. 

“No, Henry,” she answered. “Not yet. I want to be 
out here. I ... I want to be alone ! ’ ’ 

She moved away, going slowly down the avenue of trees 
until she reached the orchard, and then she went into it, 
and was hidden by the apple trees. . . . 

He led Mary into the house. “We can’t do anything, 
Mary,” he said. “We’re . . . we’re all caught in this 
thing . . . and we can’t do anything. ...” 

She went to her room, and when he had seen the door 
close behind her, he turned to go back to the drawing-room. 
He would have to write to Roger. “First it was Gilbert 
. . . then it was Ninian . . . presently, it will be! . . .” 


492 


CHANGING WINDS 


He shuddered, and tried to shut the thought out of his 
mind. 

There was a servant in the hall. “Tell the others,’’ he 
said in a cold, toneless voice, “that Mr. Ninian . . . has 
been killed in France!” 

“Oh, sir! . . the girl cried, clasping her hands to- 
gether. 

He did not wait to hear, and she hurried down the 
passage to the kitchens. 

“Two of us gone now,” he said to himself. 

He searched for writing materials, wandering round and 
round the room until he forgot what it was he wanted. 
“I’m looking for something,” he said aloud, “I’m looking 
for something, but I don’t know what it is! . . 

Then he remembered. 

“I mustn’t let myself go,” he said to himself. “I must 
keep a hold of myself. I’ve got to look after them . . . 
they ’ll want some one to ... to lean on ! ” 

He began the letter to Roger. “Dear Roger, he wrote, 
and then he dropped his pen. He sat with his elbows rest- 
ing on the table, staring in front of him, but seeing noth- 
ing. ‘ ‘ First there was Gilbert, ’ ’ he was saying to himself, 
“then there was Ninian . . . and presently there will be 
. . . me/” 

One could not believe it. One could not believe it. Why 
it was only a little while ago that Ninian was here, in this 
very room, telling them how clever the Engineers were. 
They were to win the war, these Engineers, unless stupid 
people, like the “dug-out,” prevented them from doing so. 
There, in that corner there, over by the fire, that was where 
he had sat, and told them of the Engineers. He had lain 
back in his chair, carelessly throwing his leg over the arm 
of it. . . . And when Mrs. Graham had risen and left the 
room, unable to stay any longer, and had called to him to 
come to her room and say “Good-night!” he had looked 
anxiously after her, and then, after a little while of fidget- 


CHANGING WINDS 


493 


ting and poor effort to talk lightly, had gone to her. . . . 

How could one believe it! How could any one believe 
that this hideous nightmare was true ! . . . that this horri- 
ble thing which devoured young men was not a creature of 
a fevered mind. . . . Presently the blood would cool and 
the eyes would see clearly . . . and Ninian^s great shout- 
ing voice would roar through the house, and Gilbert would 
stroll in, and say '^Hilloa, coves! . . .’’ 

There was a sound of steps in the passage, and he sat up 
and listened. Then the door opened and Mrs. Graham came 
in. There was a bright look in her tearless eyes. Her lips 
were firmly closed, and he saw that her hands were clenched. 
He stood up as she entered, and looked at her as she came 
towards him. She came close to him and laid her hand 
on his. 

“Poor Mary,” she said, softly, “we . . . we must com- 
fort poor Mary!” 

She looked about the room. “Where is she?” she asked, 
turning to him again. 

“Upstairs,” he answered. 

She went towards the door. “I must go and comfort 
her,” she said. “She was . . . very fond of ... of 
Ninian ! ’ ’ 

He followed her to the door, afraid that she might break 
down, but she did not break down. She gathered her 
skirts about her, and went up the stairs to Mary’s room, 
and her steps were firm and proud. He could hear the 
rustle of her skirt on the landing as she passed along it out 
of his sight, and then he heard her knocking on Mary’s 
door. 

‘ ‘ Can I come in, Mary ? ’ ’ she asked in a clear voice. 

He could hear the door opening . . . and then he heard 
it being closed again. 

He stood at the foot of the stairs, listening, but there was 
no need of him. He turned away, and as he did so, Wid- 
ger came into the hall. The old man stood for a moment or 


494f 


CHi^NGING WINDS 


two without speaking. Then he made a suppliant move- 
ment with his trembling hands. 

“It b ’ain’t true? . . .’’he mumbled thickly. 

“Yes, Widger,” Henry answered, “it is.” 

The old man turned away. ‘ ‘ I knowed ’un ever since ’e 
were a baby,” he said, and his lips were quivering. 
‘ ‘ Praper li ’1 chap ’e were, too ! 

“It b ’ain’t right,” he went on, looking helplessly about 
him. Then his voice took a firmer, more definite note, 
“Where’s missus to?” he asked. 

“She’s upstairs, Widger,” Henry answered. “I don’t 
think I’d say anything to her at present, if I were you!” 

“Very well, sir!” 

He moved away. The vitality seemed to have gone out 
of him, and suddenly he had become old . . . senile . . . 
shuffling. 

“They’m wisht times, sir!” he said, as he left the hall. 

4 

Henry wrote to Roger, telling him of Ninian’s death, 
and when he had finished the letter, he went out to post it. 
He could not sit still in the house ... he felt that he must 
move about until he was worn and exhausted. Mrs. Gra- 
ham was still with Mary, but perhaps by the time he re- 
turned, they would be able to come downstairs again. The 
pride with which Mrs. Graham had supported herself in 
her grief seemed to him almost god-like. Once, in the 
South of Ireland, he had seen a peasant woman bidding 
good-bye to her husband. As the train steamed out of the 
station, she howled like a wounded animal, spinning round 
like a teetotum, and waving her hands and arms wildly. 
Her hair had tumbled down her back, and her eyes seemed 
to be melting, go freely did she weep . . . and then when 
the train had disappeared round a bend of the track, she 
dried her eyes and went home. Her grief, that had seemed 
utterly inconsolable, had been no more than a summer 


CHANGING WINDS 


495 


shower. . . . He had had difficulty in preventing himself 
from laughing, and he could not restrain a feeling of con- 
tempt for her. “They write plays about that kind of silly 
howling at the Abbey Theatre, and call it ‘the Celtic 
twilight.’ No dignity, no decency! ...” 

He had heard sentimental Englishmen prating about 
“the tragic soul” of Ireland because they had listened to 
hired women keening over the dead. “But that isn’t 
grief,” he had said to them. “They’re paid to do that!” 
The Irish liked to splash about in their emotions . . . they 
wallowed in them. . . . 

But Mrs. Graham’s grief was more than a summer 
shower. Henry knew instinctively that Ninian ’s death had 
killed her. She might live for many years, but she would 
be a dead woman. She would show very little, nothing, to 
those who looked to see the signs of woe, but in her heart 
she would hoard her desolation, keeping it to herself, ob- 
truding her sorrow on no one . . . waiting patiently and 
silently for her day of release, when, as her faith told her, 
she and her son would come together again. . . . 

“It’s unfair,” he told himself, “to compare the grief 
of an illiterate Irishwoman with the grief of an English 
lady ! ” 

But then he had seen the grief of poor Englishwomen. 
Four of the Boveyhayne men had been drowned in a naval 
battle. He had gone to the memorial service in Bovey- 
hayne Church, and had seen the friends of those men min- 
gling their tears . . . but there had been none of this emo- 
tional savagery, this howling like women in kraals, th’«, 
medicine-man grief. . . . 


5 

They were both in the drawing-room when he returned. 
“I’ve written to Roger,” he said, to explain his absence. 
“Perhaps,” he went on, “there are other letters you’d like 
me to write?” 


496 


CHANGING WINDS 


‘‘Yes/’ she said, “it would be kind of you, Henry ! . . .” 

There was Ninian’s uncle, the Dean of Exebury, and Mr. 
Hare, with whom he had worked . . . they must be told 
at once . . . and there were other relatives, other friends. 
. . . He spent the evening in doing the little services that 
must be done when there is death, and found relief for his 
mind in doing them. 

“I told the servants,” he said, looking up from a letter 
he was writing. “Old Widger wanted to see you! ...” 

‘ ‘Poor Widger, ’ ’ she said. ‘ ‘ He and Ninian were so fond 
of each other!” 

She got up and went to the door. “I must go and say 
something to him, ’ ’ she said. ‘ ‘ He 11 feel it so much ! ’ ’ 

She closed the door behind her, and he sat staring at it 
after she had gone. The matchless pride of her, that she 
could forget herself so completely and think of the subor- 
dinate sorrow of her servant when she might have been 
absorbed by her own ! 

He turned to Mary who was sitting near him, and reached 
out and took her hand in his, but neither of them spoke. 

What was there to say ? Ninian was dead . . . old men 
had made a war, and this young man had paid for it . . . 
and everywhere in Europe, there were mourners for the 
young, slain for the folly and incompetence of the old and 
the worn and the impatient. 

He released Mary’s hand, and resumed the writing of his 
letter. Before he had finished it, Mrs. Graham returned to 
the room. 

“Poor Widger,” she said, “he . . . he cried!” 

She came to the table where Henry was writing, and 
placed her hand on his shoulder, and looked concernedly 
at him. 

“Aren’t you tired, Henry?” she said. 

“No, thanks !” he answered, glancing up at her and smil- 
ing. 

“You mustn’t tire yourself!” she bent over him and 


CHANGING WINDS 


497 


kissed his forehead lightly. ^‘YouVe been a great help, 
Henry, she said. 


6 

But in her room, where none could see her, she shed her 
tears. . . . 


THE TENTH CHAPTER 


1 

He had returned to Ireland. In Dublin, he found a strange 
mixture of emotions. Marsh and Galway and their friends 
were drilling with greater determination than ever, and oc- 
casionally they were to be seen parading the streets. Some 
of them wore green uniforms, shaped after the pattern of 
the khaki uniform of the British Army, but most of them 
wore their ordinary clothes, with perhaps a bandolier and 
a belt and a slouch hat. They carried rifles of an old make, 
and had long, clumsy bayonets slung by their sides. It 
seemed to Henry as he watched a company of them march- 
ing through College Green that these men were not of the 
fighting breed . . . that these pale clerks and young work- 
men and elderly professors and hungry, emaciated labour- 
ers were unlikely to deal in the serious work of war . . . 
and when he met John Marsh in the evening, he sneered 
at him. Marsh kept his temper. He was more tolerant 
now than he had been in the days when he had tutored 
Henry at Ballymartin. He admitted that the Sinn Feiners 
were widely unpopular. There were many reasons why 
they should be. Dublin was full of men and women mourn- 
ing for their sons who had died at Suvla Bay . . . and 
were in no mood for rebellion. 

“The war’s popular in the Combe,” he said. “The 
women are better off now than they were in peace times. 
That’s a handsome tribute to civilisation, isn’t it? The 
country people are the worst. They’re rich . . . the war’s 
bringing them extraordinary prosperity . . . and some of 
our people are tactless. But we’ve got to go on. We’ve 
got to save Ireland’s soul! ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


499 


Henry made an impatient gesture. “Why do you talk 
that high-falutin’ stuff/ ^ he said. 

“It isn’t high-falutin’ stuff, Henry. I’m speaking what 
I believe to be the truth. The English have tried a new 
way to kill the Irish spirit, and by God they look like suc- 
ceeding. They couldn’t kill it by persecuting us, they 
couldn’t kill it by ruining us, but they may kill it by mak- 
ing us prosperous. I feel heart-broken when I talk to the 
farmers. Money! That’s all they think about. They rob 
their children of their milk and feed them on tea, so’s they 
can make a few more pence. Oh, they’re being anglicised, 
Henry! If we can only blow some of the greed out of 
them, we’ll have done something worth while!” 

He was more convinced now than ever that the Irish 
were to be betrayed by the English after the war. 

“Look how they minimise our men’s bravery at the front. 
Even the Irish Times is protesting! ...” 

It seemed to Henry to be ridiculous to believe that the 
English government was deliberately depreciating the work 
of the Irish soldiers, and he said so. “They hardly men- 
tion the names of any regiments,” he pointed out. 

But John Marsh had an answer for him. He produced a 
despatch written by a British admiral in which was nar- 
rated the story of the landing at Suvla Bay and the beaches 
about Gallipoli. 

“He mentioned the name of every regiment that took 
part in the landing, except the two Irish regiments that did 
the hardest work and suffered the most deaths. I suppose 
that was an accident, Henry, a little oversight!” 

“You don’t think he left them out on purpose, do 
you?” 

“I do. So does every man in Ireland, Unionist or Na- 
tionalist. You see, we know this man in Ireland . . .he’s 
a well-known Unionist ... a bigot . . . and there isn’t a 
person in Ireland who doesn’t believe that he deliberately 
left the names of Dublins and the Munsters out of his des- 
patch. He forgot, when he was writing it, that he was a 


500 


CHANGING WINDS 


sailor, and remembered only that he was a politician . . . 
the kind that dances on dead men ’s graves ! ’ ^ 

It was difficult to argue with Marsh or with any one who 
thought as he thought, in face of that despatch. The omis- 
sion was inexplicable if one did not accept the explanation 
offered by Marsh. The tradition of the sea is an honour- 
able one, and sailors do not do things like that . . . the 
scurvy acts of the cheaper politicians. . . . 

“You make a fence about your mind, John,’’ said Henry, 
“and you spend all your efforts in strengthening it, so 
that you haven’t time either to look over it and see what’s 
beyond it, or to cultivate what’s inside it. You’re just 
building up barriers, when you should be knocking them 
down ! ’ ’ 

It was useless to be angry with Marsh or to argue with 
him. In everything that was done, he saw the malevolent 
intent of a treacherous people. 

“Look at this,” he said one evening when the English 
papers had come in, and he pointed to a leading article in 
the Morning Post in which the writer stated that the brav- 
ery of the Irish soldiers showed that the Irish people had 
now no feeling or grievance against the English, and there- 
fore Home Eule was no longer necessary. “Already, 
they’re plotting! They defile the dead . . . they use our 
dead men as ... as political arguments!” 

“But the Morning Post has no influence in England,” 
Henry retorted angrily. “It’s only read by footmen and 
sluts! . . .” 

“Some of our people are dubious,” John went on. 
“They’re inclined to take your point of view, and trust 
the English. I’ll read this paper to them. That’ll pull 
them up. We’d have been content with Home Rule before, 
but we want absolute separation now. We don’t want 
to be associated with a race that makes bargains on 
bodies! . . .” 

“You’re doing a damned bad work, John! ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


501 


“I'm helping to keep Ireland Irish, Henry He 
paused for a few moments, and then, laughing a little self- 
consciously, he proceeded. “Do you know that poem of 
Yeats ’s?" 

Ifs with O’Leary in the grave. 

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone^ 

Henry nodded his head. 

“Well, we're going to see whether we can't make Yeats 
re-write it. Good-night, Henry!" 

2 

He stayed in Dublin for a few weeks, gathering up old 
threads and working on his novel ; but the book made slow 
progress, and so, thinking that if he were in a quieter, less 
social place, he could work more quickly, he went home to 
Ballymartin, and here, soon after he arrived, he received 
a letter from Roger, announcing that he intended to enter 
the artillery almost at once. I can get a commission/^ he 
wrote, “and so I shall go in. You said something about 
wanting to join at the same time as me, hut perhaps as you 
are going to he married to Mary shortly, you’ll want to 
wait until afterwards. If I were you I should apply for 
a commission in an Irish regiment.” 

He put the letter down abruptly. Ever since the death 
of Ninian, he had felt convinced that the four friends were 
to be killed in battle. Gilbert had been the first to join, 
and Gilbert was the first to be killed. Then Ninian joined 
. . . and Ninian died. Roger, too, would be killed, and so 
would he, when he joined. The death of Gilbert had 
seemed to him to be a casual thing, a tragic accident, but 
when Ninian had been killed, it had seemed to him that 
here was no fortuity, that Gilbert and Ninian had died in- 
evitably, that Roger and he, when they* went out, would be 
unable to escape this destiny . . . and everything that he 


502 


CHANGING WINDS 


had done since Ninian’s death had been done in that belief. 
He would finish a book, he would marry Mary, he would 
settle his estate as best he could . . . and then he 
would make the end that Gilbert and Ninian had 
made. . . . 

But now, as he put Roger’s letter down, he had a swift, 
compelling desire to dodge his destiny, to elude death, to 
alter the course of things. Why should he die? Why 
should he yield himself up, his youth, his work, his love, 
his hope of happiness and renown and honour ... to this 
consuming thing? He could look to years of happiness 
with Mary, years of work on his books, years of enjoyment 
of things won and earned . . . and he was to give up all 
that promise and go to a bloody death in war ? Not every 
man who went was killed or even wounded . . . one knew 
that . . . but he would be killed ... he knew that, he 
told himself, as well as he knew that he was then alive. 
Sensitive-natured men, such as he, were bound to be killed 
. . . they had not the phlegm of men with blunter natures 
. . . they would not be able to keep still when stillness 
meant safety . . . their nerves would go, and in that hid- 
eous hell of noise and battering, of men killing or being 
killed, his mind might be destroyed. . . . 

That seemed to him to be the worst thing of all. He 
might not be killed ... he might be made mad. . . . 

‘H can do other work,” he said to himself. can work 
for Ireland. I can try to make things friendlier 
here! . . 

He planned a group of Young Irishmen, as he named 
them, to do for Ireland what Roger’s Improved Tories had 
hoped to do for England. They could study the conditions 
of Irish elementary education; they could try to make a 
survey of Irish wealth in the hope of discovering the inci- 
dence of its distribution; they could make an enquiry into 
work and wages, and try to stimulate the growth of Trades 
Unionism. He could help to make opinion, to create a 
social consciousness, to establish a tradition of honourable 


CHANGING WINDS 


503 


service to the community. . . . There were a host of things 
he could do, valuable things., for Ireland, things that were 
not now being done by any one. He knew people in Dub- 
lin, Crews and Jordan and Saxon and men like them, who 
were of his mind and would work patiently at dull things 
in the hope of getting an ordered community. Railways! 
One had to get the Irish railways reorganised and grouped. 
If one could solve the problem of traffic, so that the East 
and West and North and South of Ireland would be as 
accessible to each other as the East and West and North and 
South of England, one would have made a large movement 
towards a better state. . . . 

That was what he would do. He would help to construct 
things, not to destroy them. He was not afraid to go to 
the war . . . that was not the reason why he was resolving 
that he would refuse to be a soldier. It was because he 
could do better, finer work by living for Ireland than by 
dying for England. People throughout Europe were al- 
ready perturbed at the waste of potential men in war . . . 
wondering whether, after all, it was a wise thing to let 
rare men, men of unique gifts go to war. Was it really 
wise of England to let such a man as Gilbert Farlow, with 
the rare gift of comedy, be lost in that haphazard manner ? 
Ninian had had the potentialities of a great engineer. 
Would it not have been wiser to have kept him to his 
railway-building than to have let him fall, as he fell, to 
the bullet of a sniper? . . . Already people were asking 
such questions as these. If he were to go out, and were to 
be killed, would they not say, ‘‘This man had gifts that 
marked him out from other men. We ought not to have 
wasted him!” Well, why should he be wasted? He was 
not afraid. He insisted that he was not afraid. It needed 
high courage to stand up and say, “I am a man of special 
gift and I will not let that gift be wasted in war ! ’ ’ That, 
in effect, was what he was preparing to do. People would 
speak behind his back . . . speak even to his face . . . and 
call him a coward ! Well, let them do so. . . . 


504 


CHANGING WINDS 


3 

But in his heart, he knew that he was afraid to go. Al- 
most he deceived himself into believing that he was behav- 
ing well in refusing to join the Army so that he might 
devote himself more assiduously to Ireland and his work 
. . . but not completely did he persuade himself. The 
fear of death was in him and he could not allay it. The 
fear of mutilation, of madness, of blindness, of shattered 
nerves sent him shuddering from the thought of offering 
himself as a soldier . . . and mixed up with this devastat- 
ing fear was a queer vanity that almost conquered the 
fear. 

“ If I were to go in, I might do something . . . something 
distinguished!’’ 

There were times when he gave himself up to dreams of 
glory, saw himself decorated with high awards for bravery. 
He would imagine himself performing some impossible act 
of courage . . . saving an Army Corps from destruction 
. . . showing resource in a period of crisis, and so bringing 
salvation where utter loss had seemed inevitable. But 
these times of glory were few and brief: he saw himself 
most often, killed ingloriously, inconspicuously, one of a 
crowd, blown, perhaps, to pieces or buried in bombarded 
earthworks ; and through his dreams of glory and his plans 
for work in Ireland, there stubbornly thrust itself this ac- 
cusation : I ’m a coward ! I ’m a coward 1 I ’m a coward ! 

In England, men were charging the queer people who 
called themselves Conscientious Objectors with cowardice, 
but the charge seemed a baseless one to Henry. He did 
not believe that he could endure the odium and obloquy 
which some of the Conscientious Objectors had borne. 
There was courage in the man who said, will fight for my 
country ! ’ ’ but that courage might be less than that of the 
man who said, ‘ ‘ I will not fight for my country 1 ’ ’ Henry 
was not a Conscientious Objector, nor could he understand 
the state of mind of the man who was. He was a coward. 


CHANGING WINDS 


505 


Inside him, he knew that he was a coward. Inside him, 
he accused himself of cowardice. Everything in his life 
showed that he was a coward, that he shrank from physical 
combats, from tests of courage, that sometimes he shrank 
from spiritual contests. . . . 

‘‘I ought to tell Mary,’^ he said to himself. “I can^t 
marry her without telling her that I ’m ... a funk ! ’ ’ 

But he temporised even in this. “ I ’ll wait a little while 
longer,” he said. “Perhaps later on! . . .” 

Always he wanted to thrust the unpleasant thing a little 
further off. It was as if he had said to himself, “I won’t 
deal with it just yet . . . and perhaps it won’t need to be 
dealt with!” 

“I’ll finish my book first,” he said, “and then I’ll tell 
Mary. Perhaps the war will be over ! . . . ” 

4 

Mary wrote to him twice every week. Rachel Carey 
and her baby were staying at Boveyhayne Manor now, and 
Mary was glad of their company in the house, for the child 
gave Mrs. Graham pleasure. She enquired continually 
about his book. ^^What a pity/^ she wrote once, ^^that it 
was not finished before Roger went into the Army. Then 
you could both have gone in tog ether. And he had writ- 
ten, ^^YeSf it is a pity the booh was not done before Roger 
joined up .. . but itTl soon be finished. I^m getting on 
excellently with it. When it^s finished, ITl come over to 
Boveyhayne, and then weTl settle just when we shall get 
married! ...” 

Then came a mood of abasement, and he wrote a long, 
incoherent letter to her, telling her that he had resolved 
that he would not go into the Army. Because I^m a cow- 
ard, Mary. I^ve thought the thing over from beginning 
to end, thought about it until I became dizzy with thinking, 
and this is the end of it all: I’m a coward. I haven’t the 
pluck to go into the Army. That’s the truth, Mary! I 


506 


CHANGING WINDS 


make excuses for myself ... 7 pretend that this is i^ng- 
land’s war, not Ireland's, and tell myself that an Irish^nan 
who joins the British Army should he regarded in the way 
that an American, who joined, would he regarded . . . 
that Irish soldiers in the British Army are Foreign Legion- 
aries . . . and I twist my mind about in an effort to make 
excuses like that, to convince, not you or any one else, but 
me. 1 think 1 could convince you that I ought not to join, 
hut I can’t convince myself. I’m not joining, simply be- 
cause I’m a damned coward, Mary. I’m not fit to he your 
husband, dear. I wasn’t fit to he the friend of Gilbert and 
Ninian. I’m a contemptible thing that runs to its burrow 
when it hears of danger. I’m glad my father is dead. He 
hated the war, but he’d have hated to know that I was not 
in it. He took it for granted that I would go .. . never 
dreamed that I wouldn’t go. If he’d thought that 1 
wouldn’t join, he would never have talked to me about the 
war in the way he did. My father was a proud man, 
Mary, as proud as your mother, and I think he’d have died 
of shame if he’d thought I was funking this. I don’t 
know what you’ll think of me. I know what I think of 
myself. I simply can’t face it, Mary . . . that bloodiness 
and groaning and stench and unending horror. That’s 
the truth about me. I’m a coward, and I’m not fit for you. 
I’d fail you, dear, if you needed me. I fail everybody. 
I fail everything. I’m rotten through and through. . . .” 

5 

But he did not send the letter to her. He had read it 
over before putting it in the envelope. ‘‘Hysterical/^ he 
said to himself, calmer now that he had vented his feelings. 
“That’s what it is !” 

He was about to tear it up, but before he could do so, 
his mind veered again. “ I ’ll put it away, ’ ’ he said. “ I ’ll 
leave it until the morning, and read it again. Perhaps 
I’ll think differently then. I ought to tell Mary. I can’t 


CHANGING WINDS 


507 


go on just not joining, and letting her gradually suspect. 
I ought to go to her, and tell her straight out. When my 
hookas done I’ll go to her. ...” 

“What sort of a man am I?” he said again. “Analys- 
ing myself like this . . . turning myself inside out . . . 
poking and probing into my mind ! . . . Fumbling over my 
life, that’s what I’m doing! Why don’t I stand up to 
things? What’s the meaning of me? What am I here 
for?” 

If he could only strip himself to the marrow of his 
mind, if he could only see inside himself and know what 
was his purpose and discover the content of his being. . . . 

“I’m morbid,” he said. “I’m too introspective. I 
ought to look out of myself. But I can’t. It isn’t my 
fault that my eyes are turned inwards. I’m made like 
that. I can’t alter my make. I can destroy myself, but 
I can’t alter my make. . . . 

“Perhaps,” he thought, “if I were to take more exer- 
cise, if I were to go for long walks, I’d think less about 
these things. I’d get healthier notions. If I were to en- 
list, go into the ranks, and endure all that the men endure, 
that might make my mind healthier. All that drill and 
marching. . . . 

“But it’s the spirit of me that’s wrong,” he muttered 
aloud. “It’s not my body ... it’s me! 

“I must work. I must work hard, and forget all this 
torturing! ...” 

He wrote furiously at his book, and gradually it came to 
its end. “I’ll go down to Dublin again,” he said, when 
it was finished “and see if I can’t do something there that’ll 
make me forget things!” 

He stayed at Ballymartin until he had corrected the 
proofs of the new book, and then some business on the 
estate kept him at home for nearly another month. It was 
not until well in the New Year that he was able to leave 
home, and almost at the last moment he decided not to go 
to Dublin, but to travel from Belfast, by Liverpool, to 


508 


CHANGING WINDS 


Boveyhayne. Mary had asked him to spend Christmas 
with them, but he had made an excuse : estate business and 
his book ; because he could not yet bring himself to tell her 
of his cowardice. He felt that when he did so, she would 
end their engagement, and he wished to keep her love as 
long as he could. He wrote to her very frequently, more 
frequently than she wrote to him, telling her of Irish af- 
fairs. She had had difficulty in understanding so many 
things, but she was eager to know about them. He had 
filled a letter with bitter complaint of the corruption in 
Irish civic life, and she had asked why he believed in Home 
Rule. you canH trust these people to manage a munici- 
pality, how can you trust them to manage a nation?’^ 
And he had written a lengthy epistle on the state of Ireland. 

^^You see, dear,^^ he wrote, ^‘it isn^t reasonable to expect 
us to undo in a generation work which it took your country 
several centuries to do. Your people have steadily de- 
stroyed and corrupted my people. 1 know theyWe trying 
to make amends, hut they mustn’t expect miracles. You 
can’t wave a wand over Ireland, and say ^Let there he 
light!’ and instantly get light. You’ve got to remember 
that Ireland is populated largely by the dregs of Ireland 
. . . what was left after your countrymen had persecuted 
and exiled and hanged the most vigorous and most cour- 
ageous men we had . . . and it’ll take a generation or two, 
more perhaps, to get a decent level again. The most power- 
fid man in Dublin at this minute is a haberdasher who 
owns almost everything there is to own: newspapers, con- 
veyances and heaven knows what; and he has the mind of 
. . . well, an early nineteenth-century mill-owner! John 
Marsh spends a deal of time in vilifying the English as a 
mean-minded people, but my God, he has only got to look 
round the corner in Dublin, to see mean-minded men by the 
hundred. He wrote to me the other day, crowing because 
his Volunteers had prevented the application of conscrip- 
tion to Ireland, and that’s a frame of mind I don’t under- 
stand. He’s an idealist, but all his ideals are being em- 


CHANGING WINDS 


509 


ployed to enable mean-minded and greedy men like the 
farmers to go on being more mean-minded and greedier. 
The principal argument seems to be that the Irishman must 
stay at home and make money out of the war. That^s a 
long way from the days of the ‘wild geese^ and the order 
of chivalry, isn^t it? 

“I^m a Home Ruler because I want to see a sense of 
responsibility cultivated in these people, and you canH 
have a sense of responsibility until you^ve got something 
for which you are responsible. I don’t doubt that out of 
this heart-breaking population, a decent-minded population 
will come. After all, the first settlers in Australia weren’t 
much better than the people who control the Dublin Cor- 
poration, were they? If John Marsh had been about the 
world more, had had to manage things, and if Mineely and 
Connolly and the Dublin Labour people had not been em-^ 
bittered beyond all sanity of judgment by that haberdasher 
I mentioned earlier in this letter, they’d have been useful 
in the way that I want Crews and Jordan and Saxon and 
all those patient people to be useful. 

“I wish you could meet Crews and Jordan and Saxon. 
They’re very dissimilar, but they’ve got something like 
the unifying motive of a monastery, and they’re willing to 
serve and to plod and to be patient. I fight with Saxon 
because he’s a pacifist, but like all pacifists he’s a very 
pugnacious perscm, and he can get frightfully angry, but 
it’s pitiful to see him when he’s been angry, because he’s 
so sorry afterwards. I’m not a pacifist, but I haven’t a 
tenth of his pluck. He’d endure anything, that man. 
Crews and Jordan are younger than he, and very brainy. 
Crews looks as if he were one of the Don’t-Care-a-Damn 
Brigade . . . Dublin’s full of them . . . but he does care. 
He has a curiously subtle brain, and I do not know any 
one so imperturbable as he is. He never loses his temper 
... at least I’ve never seen him lose it .. . except, so he 
says, with stockbrokers and haberdashers and that kind of 
rubbish. Jordan is one of the brainiest men in Ireland . . . 


510 


CHANGING WINDS 


that, I suppose, is because he has got some English blood in 
him: a cynical-looking man, but that^s all his fun. And he 
works, my goodness, he works! 

*^IVs with men like these that I want to work, because 
I believe that they will prepare the place for the founda- 
tion of a decent commonwealth. They aren’t miracle- 
mongers, thank God, like John Marsh and Galway and Min- 
eely. They aren’t up in the sky to-day and down in the 
mud to-morrow. They keep to the level. 

^^Then there’s the Plunkett House lot. You remember, 1 
told you about Sir Horace Plunkett and the Co-operative 
Movement. Well, I want to get Crews and Jordan and 
Saxon to link themselves on to the Plunkett House people 
and form the nucleus of a new Irish Group. There are a 
few of the men at Trinity College who will come into it, 
but I’m afraid all the men at the National University are 
under the influence of Marsh and MacDonagh and the 
sloppy romantics. 

*^You see, dear, don’t you, that this job of making a 
commonwealth of worth in Ireland is a long and difficult 
one. That’s why we’ve got to be very patient. Every- 
thing’s against us. We have a contemptible press, a cow- 
ardly crowd of corrupt politicians, a greedy people, an ig- 
norant and bigoted priesthood ( that includes the Protestant 
clergy) and a complete lack of social consciousness and plan 
of life. But then, what’s life for, if it isn’t to cope with 
difficulties like that. . . .” 


6 

There was snow, thick and long-lying, on the ground 
when he reached Boveyhayne, and the crunch-crunch of it 
under their feet, as Mary and he walked home, gave him a 
feeling of pleasure, and the cold, bracing air exhilarated 
him so that he laughed at things which would otherwise 
barely have made him smile. The antics of EacheBs 
daughter, as related to him by Mary, seemed extraordi- 


CHANGING WINDS 


511 


narily entertaining, and when he drew Mary's arm in his 
and pressed it tightly, he felt that there was nothing in 
heaven or on earth more to be desired than the love of a 
woman and the love of a child. He had a sense of age, 
of a passed boundary, that made him feel much older 
than Mary. “Here I am, listening to her as she talks 
gaily about a child’s pranks, nodding my head and laugh- 
ing, too . . . and in a little while I shall tell her every- 
thing . . . and then I shall go . . . and we will not laugh 
again together. I’m holding her arm closely in mine, and 
presently I shall kiss her lips, and she will put her arms 
about me with the careless intimacy of lovers . . . and 
then I shall tell her everything . . . and she will kiss me 
no more . . . and our intimacy will shrivel up! . . .” 

He wished to prolong his pleasure in this walk through 
the snow, and so he took her back to the Manor by long 
roads and roundabout ways. They did not climb up the 
old path over the cliff because that was so much shorter 
than the hair-pin road. ... “I must tell her soon,” he 
said to himself, “but before I tell her, I must feel the most 
of her love for me 1 ” 

He listened to her, not for what she was saying, but for 
the sound of her voice, and made short answers to her so 
that he might interrupt the flow of her speech as little as 
possible. When he returned along this road, he would 
come alone and for the last time, and so, that his memory 
of her might be full, he would be no more than her auditor 
and watcher. Just to have her by his side, her arm in his, 
and hear her . . . that was sufficient. 

They walked through the village and when they came 
to Boveyhayne lane, he said to her, “Isn’t there a longer 
way, Mary?” and she laughed at him, bantering him be- 
cause of his sudden desire for exercise; but she yielded to 
him, and they took the longer road that led them past the 
Roman quarries to the fir tree, standing in isolation where 
the main roads meet. 

“Mary,” he said, as they came in sight of the house, 


512 


CHANGING WINDS 


“I want to tell you something . . . something impor- 
tant! . . 

“Yes, Quinny?’’ 

“But not now, dear. To-night! Or to-morrow, per- 
haps ! ’ ^ 

She pinched his cheek in a pretence at anger. “You 
were always very vague, Quinny!^^ she said. 

“I know,’’ he answered. “It’s a kind of . . . cowardice, 
that, isn’t it? I’m vague because I dislike . . . am afraid 
. . . to be definite. I’m a frightful coward, Mary! . . .” 

He might approach the subject by these devious ways, 
he told himself. He had not meant to talk to her about his 
failure in courage until she and he could be alone in the 
evening . . . this walk together was to be the final lovers’ 
stroll, unmarred by any bitterness . . . but even in his 
effort to postpone the time of telling, he had prepared to 
tell her . . . and perhaps it was better that she should 
know now. Here, indeed, in this snowy silence, they were 
free from any intrusion. It might not be possible to make 
his confession to her without interruption from Rachel or 
Mrs. Graham . . . and some feeling for the fitness of 
things made him decide that this outdoor scene was a bet- 
ter place for his purpose than the lamplit interior of the 
Manor. Through the blown branches of the hedges he 
could see the thick sheets of snow spread over the fields. 
The boughs of the fruit-trees in the orchard showed very 
black beneath their white covering, as if they felt cold, 
and he looked away quickly to the haystacks in the farm- 
yard that seemed so warm in spite of the snow. The dusk 
was drawing in, and the grey sky was darkening for the 
night. . . . 

“Mary,” he said, so abruptly that she looked up at him 
enquiringly. “Let’s walk back a little way. ...” 

“But, Quinny, it’s getting late. They’ll wonder what’s 
happened to us!” 

“I want to tell you . . . now, Mary!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


513 


He compelled her to turn, as he spoke, and they walked 
slowly back towards the fir tree. 

“What is it, QuinnyT' she asked tenderly, as if she 
would comfort him. 

“ I ... I want to tell you something ! ^ ’ 

“Yes?’^ 

“I hardly know how to begin. It’s very difficult, 
dear. ...” 

“What is it, Quinny?” she demanded, more anxiously. 

But still he would not tell her ... he must have her 
love a little longer. 

“Mary, I love you so much, dear ... oh, I feel like a 
fool when I try to tell you how much I love you ! ” 

‘ ‘ I know you love me, Quinny ! ’ ’ 

“And now . . . this very minute ... I love you far 
more than I ’ve ever loved you. Every bit of me is in love 
with you, Mary. You’re very sweet and dear! ...” 

She had a sense of impending disaster, but she did not 
express it in her words. “And I love you, Quinny!” she 
said. “I can’t love you more than I’ve always loved 
you! . . .” 

“Could you love me less than you’ve always loved me?” 
he asked, turning and standing before her so that his eyes 
were looking into hers. 

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’ve never tried!” 

He did not say any more for a few moments, but stood 
with his hands on her shoulders, looking steadily into her 
eyes, while she looked steadily into his. Then he took his 
hands from her shoulders and drew her into the shelter of 
his arms, and kissed her, letting his lips lie long on hers. 

‘ ‘ What do you want to tell me ? ” she said in a whisper. 

7 

Then he told her. 

“I wrote to you when I was at Ball3unartin, ” he said, 


514 


CHANGING WINDS 


^‘but I did not post the letter. I brought it with me. I 
meant to destroy it because I thought it was too emotional, 
and then I thought that perhaps I had better let you see it 
so that you might judge me, not just as I am now, talking 
to you quietly like this, but as I was when I wrote it ! ” 

He took the letter from his pocket and gave it to her. 

‘‘I had to tell you, Mary. I couldn’t marry you without 
letting you know what kind of man I am. I’m too 
frightened to go to the Front. At the bottom of all my 
excuses, that’s the truth.” 

She did not speak, but stood with his letter in her hands, 
turning it over. . . . 

“I’ve tried to persuade myself,” he went on, “that I’m 
of special account, that I ought not to go to the war, but I 
know very well that in a time like this, no one is of special 
account. Gilbert said something like that at Tre’Arrdur 
Bay when I told him that his life was of greater value than 
the life of ... of a clerk. I suppose, the finer a man is, 
the more willing he is to take his share in war, and if 
that’s true, I’m not really a fine man. I’m simply a cow- 
ard, hoarding up my life in a cupboard, like a miser hoard- 
ing up his money. I should have been the first to spend 
myself . . . like Gilbert and Ninian. I’m the only one of 
the Improved Tories who hasn’t gone! . . . Oh, I couldn’t 
offer you myself, dear. I’m too mean ... I’m a failure 
in fineness. ... I used to feel contempt for Jimphy Jayne 
. . . but he didn’t hesitate for a moment. It never entered 
his head not to go. The moment the war began, Gilbert 
enlisted, and I suppose Ninian must have left that railway 
the very minute he heard the news. I was never quite . . . 
never quite on their level, Mary, and I don’t suppose I ever 
shall be now ! ’ ’ 

She moved slightly, as if she were tired of remaining 
in one position, and were shifting to an easier one, but still 
she did not speak, nor did she raise her eyes to look at him. 

“I’m not fit to be your husband,” he said. “I’m not 
fit to be any woman ’s husband, but much less yours. Even 


CHANGING WINDS 


515 


now, when I 'm standing here talking to you in this safety, 
the thought of ... of being out there makes me shiver 
with fear. It’s the thought of ... of dying! ... I think 
and think of all those young chaps, all the fellows I knew, 
robbed of their right to live and love, as I love you, and 
work and make their end in decency and peace . . . and I 
can’t bear it. I want to save myself from the wreckage 
... to hide myself in safety until this . . . this horror is 
ended!” He paused for a while, as if he were searching 
for words and then he went on. “There was an officer in 
my carriage to-day . . . going on to Whimple . . . and he 
told me about poison gas . . . the men died in frightful 
agony, he said . . . and then he talked about machine 
guns. . . . ‘They can perforate a man like a postage 
stamp,’ he said. . . . Isn’t it vile, Mary?” 

Her head was still bent, and as she did not make an 
answer to him, he turned to look away from her. He re- 
membered how Sheila Morgan, in her anger at his cow- 
ardice, had struck him in the face and had furiously bid- 
den him to leave her. . . . Mary would not strike him, but 
she, too, would bid him to go from her. . . . 

He felt her hand on his arm. 

“Quinny!” she said very softly, and he turned to find 
her standing nearer to him and looking up at him with no 
less love than she had looked at him before he had made his 
confession to her. 

“I don’t love you, Quinny, only for what’s fine in you,” 
she said, and her speech was full of hesitation as if she 
could not adequately express her meaning. “I love you 
... for all of you. I just take the bad with the good, and 
. . . and make the best of it, dear ! ’ ’ 

“You still want me, Mary? ...” 

“My dear,” she said, half laughing and half crying, 
“I’ve always wanted you! . . . Oh, what’s the good,” she 
went on with an impetuous rush of words, “of loving a man 
only when he comes up to your expectations. I want to 
love you even when you don’t come up to my expecta- 


516 


CHANGING WINDS 


tions, Quinny, and I do love you, dear. It hasn’t anything 
to do with whether you’re brave or not brave, or good or 
bad, or great or common. I just love you . . . don’t you 
see? . . . because you’re you! ...” 

He stared at her incredulously. He had been so certain 
that she would bid him leave her when she learned of his 
cowardice. 

“But! . . 

“Come home,” she said. “You must be very tired, and 
cold!” 

She put her arm in his, and drew him homewards, and 
he yielded to her like a little child. 

As they turned the corner of the apple-orchard, they 
could see lights shining from the windows of the Manor, 
making a warm splash on the snow that lay in drifts about 
the garden. There was a great quietness that was broken 
now and then by the twittering of birds in the hedges as 
they nestled for the night, or the cries made by the screech- 
owls, hooting in the copse. 


8 

Mrs. Graham and Rachel had left them alone for a 
while, after dinner, and as he sat, with her at his feet, 
fondling her hair, she spoke of her feeling for him again. 

“I’ve wondered sometimes,” she said, “about your not 
joining ... it seemed odd . . . but I thought that per- 
haps there was something that would explain it. I’d like 
you to join, Quinny ... I can’t pretend that I wouldn’t 
. . . but I don’t feel that I ought to ask you to do so. If 
I were a man I should join, I think, but I’m not a man, 
and I’m not likely to have to suffer any of the things that 
a man has to suffer if he goes . . . and so I don’t say any- 
thing. I don’t know why I’d like you to go ... I ought 
to be glad that you haven’t gone because I love you and 
I don’t want to lose you . . . but all the same I’d like 
you to go. It isn’t just because other men have gone, and 


CHANGING WINDS 


517 


I don’t feel any desire for revenge because Ninian’s been 
killed ... it’s just because England’s England, I sup- 
pose. ...” She laughed a little nervously. “I can hardly 
expect you to feel about England as I do. You’re 
Irish! . .” 

“I’ve made that excuse for myself, Mary. Don’t you 
make it for me. I know inside me that the war isn’t 
England’s war . . .it’s the world’s war. John Marsh ad- 
mits that much. He doesn’t like English rule in Ireland, 
but he doesn’t pretend that German rule would be better 
. . . not seriously, anyhow. No, dear, I haven’t that ex- 
cuse. I know that if we lose this war, the world will be 
a worse place to live in than it is. I haven’t any con- 
scientious objection ... I don’t feel that we are in the 
wrong ... I feel that we’re in the right . . . that we 
never were so right as we are. I ’m simply anxious to save 
my skin. And even if I felt that John Marsh were right 
in being anti-English, I don’t feel that I have any right 
to take up that attitude. England’s done no wrong to my 
family. . . .You see, dear, I haven’t any excuse that’s 
worth while . . . except the wish to preserve my life . . . 
and that’s a poor excuse. When I think of being at the 
Front, I think of myself as dead . . . lying out there . . . 
without any of the decencies . . . until I’m offensive to 
the men who were my friends . . . until they sicken at the 
stench of mel ...” 

‘ ‘ Don ’t, dear ! ’ ’ she murmured. 

“Perhaps I shall conquer this . . . this meanness. I 
want to conquer it. I want to behave as I believe. I be- 
lieve that there are things one should be glad to fight for 
and die for . . . and I want to feel glad to fight for them 
and be ready to die for them. But now I feel most that I 
want to be safe ... to go on living and living and enjoy- 
ing things. ...” 

“But can you enjoy things if they’re not worth dying 
for, Quinny ? If England weren’t worthy dying for, would 
it be worth living in! That’s how I feel!” 


518 


CHANGING WINDS 


“That’s how I think, Mary, but it isn’t how I feel, 
I feel that I want to be safe no matter what happens . . . 
if civilisation is to go to smash and we’re to be driven 
back to savagery, distrusting and being distrusted ... I 
feel that I don’t care . . . that I want to be safe, to go on 
living, even if I have to live in a cave and hide from 
everything. . . . Oh, my dear, don’t you see what a poor 
thing I am!” 

“Yes,” she said simply. 

“And yet you’re willing to marry me?” . 

“Yes. I can’t help loving you, any more than I can 
help loving my country. I can’t explain it and I don’t 
want to explain it. If I were a man and England were in 
the wrong, I’d fight for England just because she’s Eng- 
land. Everything makes me feel like that. When Ninian 
was killed, something went on saying, ‘You’re English! 
You mustn’t cry! You’re English!’ And when I look at 
the trees outside, I feel that they’re English, too, and that 
they’re telling me I’m English . . . that somehow they’re 
special trees, different from the trees in other countries 
. . . that they’ve got something that I’ve got, and that I’ve 
got something they’ve got . . . something that a French 
tree or a German tree hasn’t got. . . . Oh, I know it’s silly, 
but I can ’t help it . . . and when I used to walk about the 
lanes and fields after Ninian ’s death ... I felt that the 
birds and the grass and the ferns and everything were 
saying ‘You’re English!’ asid I wanted to say back to 
them, ‘You’re English, tbo! . . .’ I suppose people feel 
like that everywhere . . . those friends of yours in Ireland 
must feel like that about Ireland . . . and Germans, 
too! . . .” 

He nodded his head. “It’s a madness, this nationality,” 
he said, “but you can’t get a cure for it. Even I feel it!” 

“Quinny!” 

“Yes, Mary!” 

There was a nervous note in her voice. She got up, so 


CHANGING WINDS 


519 


that she was on her knees, and fingered the lapels of his 
coat. 

‘ ‘ Quinny ! ’ ^ she said again, and he waited for her to pro- 
ceed. “I . . . I want us to get married . . . soon! You’ll 
probably go into the Army . . . nobody could go on feel- 
ing as you do, and not go in . . . and I’d like us to . . . 
to have had some time together . . . before you go. I 
don’t want to be married to you just . . . just a day or 
two before you go. I ... I want to have lived with you 
and to ... to have taken care of your house . . . with 
you in it! . . .” 

He folded her in his arms. 

“You will, Quinny?” she said. 

“Yes,” he answered. 


THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER 


1 

They were to be married as soon as Lent was over. Mrs. 
Graham, reluctant to lose Mary, had pleaded for delay, 
urging that Ballymartin was so far from Boveyhaven that 
she would seldom see her. “Two days’ post,” she pro- 
tested. 

“But you’ll come and stay with us, mother,” Mary de- 
clared, “and we’ll come and stay with you!” 

It would be quite easy for Henry to come to Devonshire, 
for he could carry his work about with him. Then Mrs. 
Graham had yielded to them, and it was settled that the 
marriage was to take place at the beginning of May. 
Neither Mary nor he had spoken again of the question of 
enlistment. She had said all that was in her mind about it, 
and what followed was for him to decide. 

He went back to Ballymartin. There were things to be 
done at home in preparation for the coming of a bride. 
The house had not known a mistress since his mother’s 
death, and his father had been too preoccupied with his 
agricultural experiments to bother greatly about the in- 
terior of his house. So long as he could find things more 
or less where he had left them, Mr. Quinn had been con- 
tent. 

“You won’t overhaul it too much, Quinny?” Mary said 
to him, “because I’d like to do some of that!” 

He had promised that he would do no more than was 
immediately necessary; and then he went. 

“I shall have to go to Dublin,” he had told her. 
“There’ll be a lot of stuff to settle with lawyers!” Her 
settlement, for example. “I’ll go home first, then on to 

520 


CHANGING WINDS 


521 


Dublin, and then back here. I shall get to Boveyhayne 
just after Easter!’^ 


2 

Mr. Quinn had not greatly bothered about the interior 
of the house, but Hannah had, and although there were 
things that needed to be done, there was less than he had 
imagined. 

“I’m going to be married, Hannah ! ” he said to her soon 
after he had arrived home. 

“Are you, now?” she exclaimed. 

“Yes. You remember Mr. Graham? ...” 

“Ay, poor sowl, I mind him . . . the nice-spoken, well- 
behaved lad he was! ...” 

“Well, I’m going to marry his sister !” 

“It’ll be quaren nice to think o’ this house havin’ a 
mistress in it again, an’ wee weans, mebbe. I was here, 
a young girl, when your father brought your mother home 
... I mind it well . . . she was a quiet woman, an’ she 
stud in the hall there as nervous as a child ’til I went forrit 
to her, an’ said, ^Ye’re right an’ welcome, ma’am!’, an’ 
then she plucked up her heart, an’ she give me a wee bit 
of a smile, an’ said ‘Thank ye, Hannah!’ for your father 
told her who I was. An’ she used to come an’ talk to me 
afore you were bom . . . she was terrible frightened, poor 
woman. Ay, she was terrible frightened of havin’ you! 
Your father couldn’t make her out at all. It was a quare 
pity!” 

He let her ramble on, for he wanted now to hear about 
his mother, of whom he knew so little. There was a por- 
trait of her in the house, a fair, slight, timid-looking 
woman who seemed to be shrinking out of the frame. It 
was odd to think that she was his mother, this frightened 
woman of whom he had no memory whatever, for whom he 
had no tender feeling. He had loved his father deeply, 
but he had no love for his mother. How could he feel love 


CHANGING WINDS 


52 ^ 

for her? He had never known her! . . . But now he 
wanted to know all that Hannah knew about her, for Han- 
nah perhaps had known more about her than any one. 
Hannah had cared for her, pitied her. . . . 

‘‘Yes, Hannah!” he said, so that she might proceed. 

“She was sure she was goin’ to die, an^ I had the quare 
work to keep her quiet. An’ she was terrible feard of 
dy in ’ ! ” 

He listened to her with a strange feeling of pain. All 
that he had endured at the thought of fighting had been 
endured by his mother at the thought of giving him birth. 
He felt that now, at last, he knew his mother and could 
sympathise with her and love her. 

“But sure what was the sense of bein’ afeard of that,” 
Hannah went on. “God wouldn’t be hard on the like of 
her, the poor, innocent woman. I toul’ lies til her, God 
forgive me, an’ let on to her that people made out that it 
was worse nor it was to have a child . . . but she had a 
despert bad time of it, for she was a weak woman, with 
no body in her at all, an’ a poor will to suffer things. 
She never was the better of you!” She smiled at him 
sadly. “Never! An’ she took no interest in nothin’ after 
that . . . she could hardly bear to look at you ... an’ 
you her own wee son. She didn ’t live long after you come, 
an’ mebbe it was as well, for God never made her to con- 
tend with anything. I was quaren fond of her. Ye had to 
like her, she was that helpless. She couldn’t thole any one 
next or near her but myself . . . and so I got fond of her, 
for a body has to like people that depends on them. Will 
your wife be a fair lady or a dark lady. Master Henry ? ’ ’ 

He realised that she wished him to describe Mary to 
her. 

“She’s dark,” he said. “Not ^t all like her brother!” 

“Ay, he was the big, fair man that was a credit to a 
woman to have!” 

“I have her photograph upstairs,” Henry went on, “I’U 
go and get it. You’d like to see it, wouldn’t you?” 


CHANGING WINDS 


523 


‘‘Deed an’ I would,” she answered. 

He got the photograph and gave it to her, and she took 
it in her hands and looked at it very steadily. 

“She’s a comely-lookin’ girl,” she said, handing it to 
him again. ‘ ‘ She has sweet eyes an’ a proud way of holdin’ 
her head. She shud be a good wife to you. I ’ll be glad to 
see her here, for dear knows, it’s lonesome sittin’ in the 
house with no one to look after. I miss your da sore, 
Master Henry, an’ it’s seldom you’re here now!” 

“I’ll be here much more in future, Hannah!” 

“Well, thank God for that ! I like well to see the quality 
in their houses, an’ them not to be runnin’ here an’ runnin’ 
there, an’ not thinkin’ of their own place an’ their own 
people. An’ I pray to God you’ll have fine childher, an’ 
I’ll be well-spared to see them growin’ up to be a credit 
to you!” 

The old woman’s patient service and love seemed very 
noble to him, and he went to her and took her hand. 
“You’re the only mother I’ve ever known, Hannah!” he 
said. “You’ve always been very good to me!” 

“An’ why wouldn’t I be good to you?” she exclaimed, 
raising her fine blue eyes to his. “Aren’t you the only 
child I ever had to rear? Dear bless you, son, what else 
would I be but good to you?” 

And suddenly she put her arms about him and kissed him 
passionately, and as she kissed him, she cried: 

“God only knows what I’m girnin’ for!” she exclaimed, 
releasing him and drying her eyes. 

3 

He wandered about the house, touching a chair or finger- 
ing a curtain or looking at a portrait, and wondered how 
Mary would like her new home. It was not an old house, 
nor had the Quinns lived in it from the time it was built, 
and so Henry could not feel about it what Ninian must have 
felt about Boveyhayne Manor, in which his ancestors had 


CHANGING WINDS 


5U 

lived for four centuries. But it was his home, in which he 
had been born, in which his mother and father had died, and 
it seemed to him to be as full of memories and tradition 
as Mary ’s home. The war had broken the line of Grahams, 
broken a tradition that had survived the dangers of four 
hundred years. That seemed to Henry to be a pity. Per- 
haps, he thought, this worship of Family is a foolish thing. 
There was a danger in being rooted to one place, in letting 
your blood become too closely mingled, and a tradition 
might very well become a substitute for life ; but when all 
that was said and admitted, there was a pride in one’s 
breeding that made life seem like a sacrament, and the 
years but the rungs of a long ladder. Once, in the days of 
the Bloomsbury house, they had talked of tradition, and 
some one had related the old story of the American tourist 
who w£ts shown the sacred light, and told that it had not 
been out for hundreds of years. ‘‘Well, I guess it’s out 
nowl” the American replied, blowing the light out. They 
had made a mock of the horrified priest and had protested 
that his service to the flame was a waste of life and energy 
and time. And when they had said all that they had to 
say, Ninian, speaking more quietly than was his wont, had 
interjected, “But don’t you think the American was rather 
a cad?” 

They had argued fiercely then, some of them protesting 
that the American’s disregard of a worn convention was 
splendid, virile, youthful, god-like. Roger, Henry remem- 
bered, had sided with Ninian so far as to admit that the 
American’s behaviour had been too inconsiderate. “He 
might have discussed the matter with the priest . . . tried 
to persuade him to blow it out himself ! ’ ’ but that was as 
far as he would go with Ninian. 

“I admit,” Ninian had retorted, “that it was a foolish 
tradition . . . but don’t you think the American was 
rather a cad. It was better, wasn’t it, to have that tradi- 
tion than to have none at all?” 

Now, standing here, in this house that had been his 


CHANGING WINDS 


5 ^ 


father’s, and now was his, and would, in due time, be his 
son’s, if ever he should have a son, it seemed to him that 
Ninian had been right in his contention. And just as 
Mary, moving through the Devonshire lanes, had felt that 
everything proclaimed its Englishness and hers, making 
them and her part of each other, so he, looking out of the 
window across the fields, felt something inside him insist- 
ing, ^‘You’re Irish. You must be proud! You’re Irish! 
You must be proud! ...” 

He remembered very vividly how his father had led him 
to this very window once and, pointing towards the fields, 
had said, ‘‘That’s land, Henry! My land! ...” 

And because he had been proud of his land, had been 
part of it, as it had been part of him, he had been willing 
to spend himself on it. There seemed to Henry to be in 
that, all that there was in patriotism. Irrationally, im- 
pulsively, unaccountably one loved one’s country. The air 
of it and the earth of it, the winds that blew over it and 
the seas that encircled it, all these had been mingled to 
make men, so that when there was danger and threat to a 
man’s country, some native thing in him stirred and com- 
pelled him to say, ‘ ‘ This is my body ! This is my blood ! ’ ’ 
and sent him out, irrationally, impulsively, unaccountably, 
to die in its defence. There was here no question of birth 
or possessions : the slum-man felt this stirring in his nature 
as strongly as the landlord. In that sudden, swift rising 
of young men when war was declared, each man instinct- 
ively hurrying to the place of enlistment, there were men 
from slums and men from mansions, all of them, in an in- 
stant, made corporate, given unity, brought to communion, 
partaking of a sacrament, becoming at that moment a sacra- 
ment themselves. . . . 


4 

But if this stirring in one’s nature made a man both a 
sacrament and a partaker of a sacrament, was there not yet 


526 


CHANGING WINDS 


something horrible in this spilling of blood, this breaking 
of bodies? Was this sacrament only to be consummated 
by the butcher? Was there no healing sacrament which, 
when a man partook of it, gave him life and more life? 
Was there not an honourable rivalry among nations, each 
to be better than the other, to replace this brawling about 
boundaries, this pettifogging with frontiers? Was there 
to be no end to this killing and preparing for killing? 
Would men, from now on, set themselves to the devisal of 
murderous and more murderous weapons of war until at 
last an indignant, disgusted God, sick of the smell of 
blood, threw the earth from Him, caring nothing what hap- 
pened to it, so that it was out of His consciousness ? . . . 

While he looked out of the window, the dusk settled 
down, and he could see the mists rising from the fields. 
He drew the curtains, and went and sat down by the fire. 
There was a faint odour of burning turf in the room, and 
as he watched the blue spirals of smoke curling up the 
chimney, he remembered how he had trudged across Dart- 
moor once, and, suddenly, unexpectedly had turned a cor- 
ner of the road, and looked down on a village in a hollow, 
and for a moment or two had imagined he was in Ireland 
because of the smell of burning turf that came from th^ 
cottage chimneys. 

“We and they are one, ^ ^ he murmured to himself. ‘ ‘ On)? 
differences are but two aspects of the same thing. OuV 
blood and their blood, our earth and their earth, mingled 
and made sacramental, shall be to the glory of God ! ’ ’ 

The door opened, and Hannah came in, carrying a lighted 
lamp. 

“I just thought I’d bring it myself,” she said. ‘‘I’d 
be afeard of my life to let Minnie handle it. Dear knowss 
but she’d set herself on fire, or mebbe the house, an’ that’d 
be a nice thing, an’ a new mistress cornin’ to it. Will h 
put it down here by your elbow?” 

“Anywhere, Hannah!” he answered. 

“I’ll just rest it here then, where it’ll not be too strong- 


CHANGING WINDS 


527 


for your eyes. You ought to have the electric light put 
in the house. Major Caimduff has it in his house, an’ it’s 
not half the size of this one. ... Will I get you some- 
thing ? ’ ’ 

‘‘No, thank you, Hannah!” 

“A taste of somethin’ to ate, mebbe, or a sup to drink?” 

‘ ‘ Nothing, thank you I ’ ’ 

She went over to the fire. “Dear bless us,” she said, 
“that’s no sort of a fire at all. What come over you, to let 
it get that low!” 

“I didn’t notice it, Hannah!” 

“ ’Deed an’ I don’t suppose you did . . . moidherin’ 
your mind about one thing an’ another! There’ll be a dif- 
ferent story to tell when the mistress comes home. Mark 
my words, there will! Dear, oh, dear, oh, dear! ...” 

5 

“I’m going to Belfast to-night, Hannah,” he said when 
he had been at home a few weeks. “I want to catch an 
early train to Dublin to-morrow.” 

“Yes,” she said. 

“When I come back, I shall bring my wife with me!” 

“God bless us and save us,” she exclaimed, “it’ll be 
quare to think of you with a wife, an’ it on’y the other day 
since you were a child, an’ me skelpin’ you for provokin’ 
me. Well, I’ll have the house ready for yous both when 
you come!” 

“Will you tell Matier to harness the horse. ...” 

“I’ll tell him this minute. That man’s near demented 
mad at the thought of you marryin’. ‘Be the hokey 0!’ 
he says whenever I go anear him, an’ then he starts laughin’ 
an’ tellin’ me it’s the great news altogether. ‘I wish,’ says 
he, ‘the oul’ lad was alive. He’d be makin’ hell’s blazes 
for joy!’ Och, he’s cracked, that fella. I tell him many’s 
the time it’s in the asylum he should be, but sure, you 
might as well talk to the potstick as talk to him. He ’ll 


528 


CHANGING WINDS 


drive you to the station with a heart an^ a han’, and the 
capers of him when you both come back’ll be like nothin’ 
on God’s earth!” 

‘‘So long as he doesn’t capsize us both into the 
ditch! . . 

“Him capsize you! I’d warm his lug for him if he 
dar’d to do such a thing! ...” 


THE TWELFTH CHAPTER 

1 

He had been to the offices of Messrs. Kilworth and Kil- 
worth in Kildare Street, and had seen Sir John Kilworth 
and settled as much of his business as could then be done. 
Now, wondering just what he should do next, he made his 
way to Stephen's Green and entered the Park, and while 
he was standing on the bridge over the lake, looking at the 
dark fish in the water, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and 
turning round, saw John Marsh. 

“I didn’t know you were in Dublin,” John said, holding 
out his hand. 

haven’t been here very long,” Henry answered, ‘‘and 
I’m going away again after Easter. I’m going to be mar- 
ried.” 

“Married!” 

“Yes . . . to Ninian Graham’s sister. I’ve often 
talked of you to her. You must come and stay with us 
when we get back to Ballymartin.” 

“Yes. Yes, I should like to! I hope you’ll be happy, 
Henry!” He spoke in a nervous, agitated way that was 
not habitual with him, and Henry, looking more closely 
at him, saw that he was tired and ill-looking. 

“Aren’t you well, John?” he asked. 

“Oh, yes. Yes, I’m quite well. I’m rather tired, that’s 
all. I’ve been working very hard!” 

“Still drilling?” 

“Yes . . . still drilling!” 

“What are you doing at Easter, John?” Henry asked. 

Harsh looked at him quickly, almost in a startled fashion. 

629 


530 


CHANGING WINDS 


Easter!’’ he repeated. ‘‘Oh . . . nothing! Why?” 

“You and I might go for a long walk through the moun- 
tains,” Henry answered. “We could walk to Glendalough 
and back again. It would just fill up the Easter holidays. 
Let’s start to-morrow morning. I’m staying at the Club. 
You can meet me there!” 

“No, I’m sorry, Henry, I can’t go with you! ...” 

“Why not? You said you’d nothing particular to do!” 

“I’m going to Mass in the morning. ...” 

“Well, that doesn’t matter. We can start after you’ve 
been. Come along, John. You look washed-out, and the 
tramp’ll do you good! ...” 

Marsh shook his head. “I can’t go, Henry,” he said. 
“It isn’t only to-morrow morning that I want to go to 
Mass ... I want to go the day after . . . and I want to go 
with all . . . all my people on Easter Sunday!” 

“You’ve grown very religious, John. Do you go to 
Mass every morning?” 

“I’ve been every morning now for a month. You see, 
one doesn’t know . . . well, perhaps I am growing more 
religious. I won’t keep you now. Perhaps I shall see you 
again! . . .” 

“Why, of course, you’ll see me again. Heaven and 
earth, man, anybody ’d think you were going to die, the way 
you talk!” 

Marsh did not speak. He smiled when Henry spoke of 
dying, and then looked away. They were still standing 
on the bridge, and he leant on the parapet and looked down 
on the lake. 

“Queer things, fish!” he said. 

“Not nearly so queer as you are,” Henry answered. 
“Why won’t you come with me? You won’t want to be 
cooped up in Dublin all Easter, do you?” 

‘ ‘ Cooped up ! ” 

“Yes. Two or three days of mountain air ’ud do you 
a world of good. You’d better come with me !” 

“No^ I can’t,” he answered so abruptly that Henry did 


CHANGING WINDS 


531 


not press the matter again. ^‘When are you going to be 
married, Henry ? ” he asked, speaking in his old, kindly tone 
again. 

“At the beginning of May . . . less than a fortnight 
now!’^ 

Marsh turned away from the water, and stood with his 
back to the parapet. “Why don't you spend Easter with 
your fiancee he said. 

“That isnT quite possible, John. I should only be in the 
way, if I were there now ! ’ ’ 

“Or at Ballymartin. It would be rather nice to spend 
Easter at Ballymartin!’’ 

“Well, I will, if you’ll come with me. ...” 

“I can’t do that. I don’t think I should stay in Dublin 
at Easter if I were you. ...” 

“Why?” 

“Oh, it’ll be dull for you. People go away. There’s 
not much to do. I should go to the North or over to Eng- 
land or somewhere if I were you!” 

Henry felt resentful. “You seem damned anxious to get 
rid of me, John,” he said. “You won’t come into the 
mountains with me, and you keep on telling me to clear 
out of Dublin!” 

Marsh turned to him quickly, and put his hand on his 
arm. 

“My dear Henry,” he said, very gently, “you know that 
I don’t feel like that. I thought you’d be ... I thought 
you’d have a happier Easter out of Dublin, that was all. 
That place in Wales, where you went with poor Far- 
low. . . .” 

“Tre’Arrdur Bay?’^ 

“Yes. Why don’t you go there? It really isn’t much 
further than Glendalough.” 

“You can’t walk to it, John, and you can walk to Glen- 
dalough!” 

“Oh, well, if you won’t go . . . you won’t go, and there’s 
an end of it. Good-bye!” 


532 


CHANGING WINDS 


“Wait a bit. Come and dine with me to-night!” 

“I can% Henry!” Henry made an angry gesture. 
“Don’t be hurt,” Marsh went on quickly. “I have things 
to attend to. You see, I didn’t know you were here. I’m 
on my way now to a ... a committee meeting. I ’ll come 
and see you to-morrow, if I can manage it. I ’ll lunch with 
you somewhere!” 

“All right. I’ll meet you here at one, and we’ll lunch at 
the Shelbourne. By the way, John, aren’t there some races 
on Monday?” 

“Yes . . . at Fairyhouse!” 

“Well, couldn’t we go to them? I’ve never seen a horse- 
race in my life! ...” 

“I don’t think I can manage that, Henry! ...” 

“Oh, damn you, you can’t manage anything. Well, all 
right, I ’ll see you to-morrow ! ’ ’ 

“Good-bye, then! ...” 

He went off, leaving Henry on the bridge staring after 
him, and as he went towards the Grafton Street gate, there 
was something slightly incongruous about his look. 

“I know what it is,” Henry said to himself. “His 
coat’s too big for him. He always did wear things that 
didn’t fit him!” 


2 

Marsh did not keep the appointment. Soon after one 
o’clock, a boy came to Henry, and asked him if he were 
Mr. Quinn, and when Henry had assured him that he was, 
he said, “Mr. Marsh bid me to tell you, sir, that he’s not 
able to come. He says He’s very sorry, but he can’t help 
it!” 

The lad repeated the message almost as if he had learned 
it by heart. ‘ ‘ Oh, very well ! ’ ’ Henry said, offering money 
to him.” 

“Ah, sure, that’s all right, sir!” the lad said, and then 
he went away. 


CHANGING WINDS 


533 


'H suppose/’ Henry said to himself angrily, “he’s at 
his damned drilling again ! ’ ’ 

He lunched alone, and then took the tram to Kingstown, 
and walked from there to Bray along the coast. He felt 
dispirited and lonely. Jordan and Saxon were out of Dub- 
lin .. . Jordan was in Sligo, he had heard, and Saxon 
was staying with his uncle near the mountains. He knew 
that Crews lived in Bray, but he had forgotten the address. 
“Perhaps,” he thought, “I shall see him in the street. . . 

“Lordy God!” he exclaimed, “I’d give the world for 
some one to talk to. John Marsh might have tried to meet 
me. Fooling about with his . . . penny-farthing volun- 
teers!” 

“In a little while,” he said to himself, as he descended 
into Killiney and walked along the road by the railway 
station, “I shall be married to Mary, and then! ...” 

He remembered what she had said to him at Boveyhayne, 
“I’d like you to go, Quinny ... I can’t pretend that I 
wouldn’t. ...” 

He stood for a while, leaning against the wall and look- 
ing out over the crumpled sea. “I don’t know,” he said 
to himself, * ‘ I don ’t know ! ’ ’ 


3 

He climbed to the top of Bray Head, and while he stood 
there, his mind was full of thoughts that beat backwards 
and forwards. In olden times, the histories said, Ireland 
had sent a stream of scholars over the waste places of 
Europe to fertilise them and make them fruitful. “Now,” 
he thought bitterly, “we send ^bosses’ to Tammany 
Hall. . . .” 

He tried to envisage the means whereby Ireland would 
be brought to the measure and the stature of a dignified 
and honourable nation . . . “not this brawling, whining, 
cadging, snivelling. Oh- Jesus-have-mercy-on-us disorder!” 


534 


CHANGING WINDS 


and he saw only a long, tedious, painful process of self-re- 
generation. “We must rise on our own wings 

“But first we must be free, free from the bondage of 
history, free from the bondage of romance, free from the 
bondage of politics, free from the bondage of religion, and 
free from the bondage of our bellies ! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ There are four Irishmen to be conquered and controlled : 
the Publican, the Priest, the Politician and the Poet. . . . ’ ^ 
“We cannot be friendly with England until we are equal 
with England . . . but England cannot make us equal with 
her ... we can only do that ourselves ! ’ ^ 

“England is our sister . . . not our mother! ...” 
“Catholicism is Death . . . and Intolerance is Death. 
Wherever there is Catholicism there is Decay that will not 
be stopped until the people protest. Wherever there is In- 
tolerance there is a waste of life, a perversion of energy. 
When the Protestant ceases, and the Catholic begins, to 
shout ‘To Hell with the Pope,’ there will be glory and life 
in Ireland. ...” 

He tried to plan a means of making a change of mind in 
Ireland. “We must make opinions and active brains!” 
and so he saw himself urging his friends to abandon par- 
liaments to the middle-aged and the second-rate, while they 
bent their minds to the conquest of the schools. “Let the 
old men make their speeches,” he said aloud as if he were 
addressing a conference. “Well mould the minds of the 
children!” 

They must exult in service. “I believe in Work . . . 
in the Job Well Done ... in giving oneself without ceas- 
ing ... in the holy communion of men labouring together 
for something which is greater than themselves ... in 
spending oneself with no reward but to know that one is 
spent well! ...” 

They would enlist the young men of generous mind. 
They would open their minds to the knowledge of the wide 
world, and would pity the man who was content only to be 
an islander j and they would give the harvest of their minds 


CHANGING WINDS 


585 


to their juniors, so that they, when they grew to manhood, 
might find greater ease in working for the common good. 
They would demand, not privileges, but responsibilities. 
“If we cannot make decisions, even when we decide 
wrongly, then we are not men ! ’ ’ 

“We must kill the Publican, we must subdue the Priest, 
we must humiliate the Politician, and chasten the 
Poet. . . .’’ 

“In all our ways, 0 God, let us guide ourselves! . . .’^ 

It seemed to him that God was not a Being who miracu- 
lously made the world, but a Being who laboured at it, 
suffered and failed, and rose again and achieved. ... He 
could hear God, stumbling through the Universe, full of 
the agony of desire, calling continually, “Let there be' 
Light ! Let there be Light ! . . . ’ ^ 

4 

He looked about him. Behind him, lay the long broken 
line of the Wicklow mountains, with the Sugar Loaf thrust- 
ing its pointed head into the heavens. There in front of 
him, heaving and tumbling, was the sea : a miracle of heal- 
ing and cleansing. It would be good, he thought, to spend 
one’s life in the sound of the sea, taking no care for the 
lives of other men, content that oneself was fed and com- 
fortable. ‘ ^ But that would not be enough. There must be 
Light and More Light!” 

“God,” he said, “has many forms. In that place, he is 
a Quietness ... in this place, a Discontent ... in a third 
place, a Quest.” 

“But here, God is a Demand. ^Let there be Light ! Let 
there be more Light ! ’ ” 


5 

He went home and wrote to Mary. impulse is to 

tell you no more than this, that I love you. 1 wrote to you 


536 


CHANGING WINDS 


this morning, and I have nothing to add that is news. But 
I feel an overpowering desire to insist on my love for you 
... to do nothing for ever hut love you and love you. . . . 
You see the mood Pm in! 1 went out of Dublin to-day, 
sulking and depressed because John Marsh had failed me 
and I was lonely, hut now I^m extraordinarily happy. I 
feel that I have only to stretch out my hand and touch you 
. . . and then I shall he depressed no more. This is not a 
letter. It has no beginning and it will have no end. lt*s 
an outpouring. To-night is very beautiful. I went up to 
my bedroom a few moments ago, and sat at the window 
looking over Stephen’s Green. There was a blue mist 
hanging over the trees, and the sky was full of light and 
colour. I do not believe there is any place in the world 
where one sees so much of the sky as in Dublin. It reaches 
up and up until you feel that if a bird were to pierce the 
clouds with its beak, it would tear a hole in the heavens and 
let the universe in. A7id while I was sitting there, I felt 
very near to you, dearest. In ten days we shall be mar- 
ried, and then you will come with me and see these places, 
too. I shall become Irish over again when I show you my 
home, and I shall watch Ireland taking hold of you and 
absorbing you and making you as Irish as I am. You’ll 
go on thinking that you’re English until some one speaks 
disparagingly of Ireland, aiid then you’ll flare up, and 
you’ll be Irish, not only m nature, but in knowledge. Ire- 
land does that to people, so you cannot hope to escape. 
Good-night, my very dear!” 


6 

On Sunday, he went into the mountains, and in the even- 
ing he returned to Dublin. There was an extraordinary 
quietness in the streets, though they were crowded with 
people . . . the quietness that comes when people are tired 
and happy. As he crossed 0 ’Connell Bridge, he stood for a 
few moments to look up the Liffey. The sunset had trans- 


CHANGING WINDS 


537 


muted the river to the look of a sheet of crinkled gold, and 
the sunlight made the houses on the quays look warm and 
lovely, even though they were old and worn and discol- 
oured “In her heart,’’ he thought, “Dublin is still a 
proud lady, although her dress be draggled!” 

He turned to look at a company of Volunteers who were 
marching towards Liberty Hall. There were little girls in 
Gaelic dress at the head of them, accompanied by a pale, 
tired-looking woman, with tightened lips, who stumped 
heavily by the side of them; and following them, came 
young men and boys and a shuffling group of hungry la- 
bourers, misshapen by heavy toil and privation . . . and 
as the company passed by, girls stood on the pavement and 
jeered at them. They pointed to the woman with tight- 
ened lips, and mocked at her uniform and her tossed 
hair. . . . 

“They’re fools,” Henry thought, looking at them as they 
went wearily on, “but, by God, they’re finer than the peo- 
ple who jeer at them. They . . . they are serving some- 
thing . . . and these Don’t-Care-a-Damners aren’t serving 
anything! ...” 

There was a man at his elbow who turned to him and 
said, “Them lads ’ud run like hell if you were to point a 
penny pop-gun at them! If a peeler was to take their 
names, they’d be shiverin’ with fright. They’d fall out of 
their trousers with the terror ’d be on them ! ’ ’ 

Henry did not answer. Indeed, it seemed incredible that 
there was any fight in them ... if he had been asked for 
his opinion, he might have said something similar to what 
this stranger had said to him . . . but he hated to hear 
the man’s disparagement, and so he did not make any 
answer to him. 

“I’d rather have them on my side than have him,” he 
thought as he moved away, “with the stink of porter on 
him!” 

It sickened him to see the generosity and the youth walk- 
ing in the company of the hopelessness of Ireland, training 


5S8 


CHANGING WINDS 


themselves in the means of killing. “If they’d put all that 
energy and enthusiasm into something that will preserve life 
and make it deeper and finer, nothing could prevail against 
them. If only John had more intellect and less emotion 
. . . if Mineely and Connolly were less bitter!” 

He walked along Grafton Street, turning phrases over in 
his mind, angry phrases, bitter things that he would say to 
John Marsh when he met him. 

“What have young lads and girls to do with Hate and 
Death ? ” he said to himself, as if he were talking to Marsh. 
“You’re perverting them from their purpose ! You’re rob- 
bing God of His due ... of the hope that fills His Heart 
with each generation!” 

“But it’s no good talking to him ... he’s too fond of 
spilling over. If he were like Yeats, content to love Ire- 
land at a distance ... to ^ arise and go now’ no further 
than the Euston Koad ... he might achieve something, 
and at all events, he’d be harmless !” 

He turned out of Grafton Street into Stephen’s Green. 

“To-morrow,” he said to himself, “I’ll go to Fairy- 
house ! ’ ’ 

And then he went to his Club. He was tired and sleepy, 
and soon after supper, he went to bed. 


7 

It was late when he awoke and so, feeling lazy after his 
day’s climbing, he resolved that he would not go to the 
races. “I’ll loaf about,” he said, “and to-night I’ll go to 
a theatre.” There was a letter from Mary and one from 
Koger. Gerald Luke was killed in France last week, and 
so was Clifford Dartrey. Goeffrey Grant has been wounded 
badly. The Improved Tories have suffered heavily in the 
War. ...” Roger wrote. ^ 

When he had breakfasted, he left the Club and walked 
towards Sackville Street. He would go to the Abbey The- 


CHANGING WINDS 


539 


atre, he thought, and book a seat for the evening perform- 
ance. 

There was an odd, bewildered look about the people who 
stood in groups in Sackville Street. 

‘‘What’s up?” Henry said to a bystander. 

“Begod,” said the man, “I think there’s a rebellion on. 
That’s what this woman says anyway!” 

“A what?” 

“A rebellion or something of the sort. You can ask her 
yourself! Begod, it’s a quare day to have it. The peo- 
ple’ll not enjoy themselves at all. ...” 

Henry turned to the woman who was standing in the cen- 
tre of the group, endlessly relating her experience. 

“I went to the Gener’l,” she said, “an’ I said to the man 
behin’ the counter, ‘Gimme two ha’penny postcards an’ a 
penny stamp an’ change for a shillin’, if you please!’ and 
I hadn’t the words out of my mouth ’til a man in a green 
uniform . . . one of them Sinn Feiners . . . come up to 
me, an’ pointed a gun at me, an’ toul’ me to go home. 
‘Go home yourself!’ says I, an’ I give his oul’ gun a push 
with my hand, ‘an’ who are you to be orderin’ a person 
about?’ ‘If you don’t go on when I tell you,’ says he, 
H’ll shoot you!’ an’ I declare to my God he looked as if 
he’d blow the head off you. ‘Well, wait till I get my 
change anjrway,’ says I. ‘Ye’ll get no change here,’ 
says he. ‘I will so,’ I said, and I turned to the man behind 
the counter, but, sure, God- bless you, he wasn’t there. 
‘Well, this bates all,’ says I to the Sinn Feiner, ‘an if the 
peelers catches a houldt of you, you’ll get into bother 
over the head of this!’ I picked up my shillin’, an’ I 
went out. The place was full of them. They were or- 
derin’ everybody out, except a couple or three soldiers 
that they made prisoners. An’ if you were to go down 
there now, you’d see them, young fellas that I could bate 
with my one hand, cocked up behin’ the windas with guns 
in their hands, an’ telling people to move on out of 
that. ...” 


CHANGING WINDS 


MO 

Some one came into the group, and said “What’s that?” 
and she turned to him and began again. “I went in to the 
Gener’l,” she said, “an’ I said to the man behin’ the 
counter, ‘Gimme two ha’penny postcards. ...” 

Henry made his way out of the group of listeners, 
and walked down the street towards the General Post Of- 
fice. 

“ It ’s absurd, ’ ’ he said. ‘ ‘ Ridiculous ! A rebellion ! ’ ’ 

But something was toward. On the roof of the Post Of- 
fice there were two flags, a green flag with a motto on it, 
and a tri-colour, orange, white and green. There was 
hardly any wind, and the flags hung limply from their 
staffs, but as Henry approached the Post Office, the wind 
stirred, and the green flag fluttered enough for him to read 
what was printed on it. It bore the legend Irish repub- 
lic. 

“It’s a poor sort of performance, this!” he said as he 
came up to the building. 

All the windows on the ground floor were broken, and 
many of those on the upper floors, and in each window, 
on sacks laid on piled furniture, were one or two young 
volunteers, each with a rifle cocked. . . . 

8 

There was a holiday mood on the people. They had come 
out to enjoy themselves, and’ here was an entertainment 
beyond their dreams of pleasure. ... It was a dangerous 
kind of joke to play . . . one of them oul’ guns might go 
off, and who knows who might get killed dead . . . and it 
was a serious thing to seize possession of the Post Office 
. . . if the peelers was to come an’ catch them at it an’ 
bring them before the magistrates, they’d be damn near 
transported . . . but it was the great joke all the same. 
Whoever thought there would be the like of that to see, 
and not a penny to pay for it. . . . The minute the peel- 
ers came up . . . where in hell were the peelers ? 


CHANGING WINDS 


541 


It was then that they began to believe that there was 
more than a joke in this rebellion. There were no police- 
men to be seen anywhere. “That’s strange now! There 
ought to be a peeler or two about ! . . . ” 

Then some one, pale and startled, came by. “They’ve 
killed a policeman ! ” he said. ‘ ‘ The unfortunate man 1 I 
was coming past the Castle, and I saw a Sinn Feiner go up 
to him and blow his brains out. Not a word of warning! 
The poor man put up his hand to bid them go back . . . 
they were trying to get into the Castle . . . and the Sinn 
Feiner lifted his rifle and shot him dead ! . . . ” 

“Begod, it’s in earnest they are! ...” 

“But what can they do? They can’t hold out against 
the British Army. . . .” 

“They might do a lot, now! They’re mad, the whole of 
them! What in hell do they want to start a rebellion 
for? ...” 

Henry moved away. He went from group to group, lis- 
tening to one for a while, and then moving on to another. 
There were many rumours already flying through the crowd. 
The Germans had landed in the West, and were marching to 
Dublin. A “mysterious stranger” had been captured on 
the coast of Kerry a few days before. ‘ ‘ It was Casement ! ’ ’ 
The German Navy had made a raid on England, and the 
British Fleet had been badly beaten. . . . 

A youth, holding a rifle with a fixed bayonet, stood on 
sentry-go in the middle of the street. He was very pale 
and tired and nervous-looking, but looked as resolute as he 
looked tired. He did not speak to any one, nor did any 
one speak to him. He stood there, staring fixedly in front 
of him, watching and watching. . . • ^ 

There was a sound of rumbling carts, and the noise of 
people cheering, and presently a procession of wagons, 
loaded with cauliflower, and guarded by armed Volun- 
teers, came out of a side street, and drove up to the Post 
Office. 

“The Commissariat!” some one said. “Begod they’ll be 


542 


CHANGING WINDS 


tired of cauliflower before they’re through with that lot!” 

It was comical to see those loads of cauliflower being 
driven past. Ireland was to fight for freedom with her 
stomach full of cauliflower. . . . 

There was a Proclamation of the Republic on a wall near 
by, and he hurried to read it. 

“What’s the thing at the head of it?” a woman asked, 
gazing at the Gaelic inscription on top of the Proclamation. 

“That’s Irish,” the man beside her replied. 

‘ ‘ I know that. What does it mean ? ’ ’ 

“Begod, I don’t know. ...” 

Henry read the Proclamation through, and then re-read 
the finely-phrased end of it ! 

We place the Irish Republic under the protection of the 
Most High God, Whose Blessing we invoke on our arms, and 
we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour 
it. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must by its 
valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children 
to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself 
worthy of the august destiny to which it is called. 

“That’s John,” he said to himself, “or MacDonagh! 
And they began the thing by killing an unarmed man! 
Their fine phrases won’t cover that mean deed! ...” 

9 

He went back to his Club, and on the way, found that 
the rebels were in possession of Stephen’s Green. The 
gates were closed, and at each gate were armed guards. He 
looked through the railings, and saw some boys lying on the 
turf, with their rifles beside them. They did not move nor 
look up, but lay very still and quiet, with a strange, pre- 
occupied expression on their faces. A little further on, 
other lads were digging up the earth. 


CHANGING WINDS 


543 


*‘What are you doing he said to one of them, and the 
lad straightened himself and wiped the sweat from his brow. 

‘‘I don’t know, sir!” he said, smiling nervously. “I’m 
supposed to be diggin’ a trench, but I think I’m diggin’ 
my grave! . . 

A trench ! When he looked at the poor scraping of earth 
and sod, he felt a fierce anger against Marsh and his friends 
swelling in his heart. “They haven’t the gumption to 
know that this is the worst place they could have chosen 
to entrench themselves, even if they knew how to make 
trenches!” On all sides of the Green were high houses, 
from which it would be easy to pick off every man that lay 
in the trenches. . . . 

There were carts and motor-cars drawn across the street 
to make a barricade, and most of the gates of the Green had 
garden-seats and planks lying against them. There were 
even branches, torn from the trees and shrubs, thrust 
through the railings. . . . 

He went into his Club to lunch. “They’re in the Col- 
lege of Surgeons, sir!” a servant said. “They say Ma- 
dame ’s in the Green! ...” 

“Madame?” he said vaguely. 

“Yes. Madame Markiewicz. They killed a police- 
man. ...” 

“Do you mean the man at the Castle?” 

“No, sir. I didn’t hear of him. They killed this one on 
the other side of the Green. There’s cold lamb and cold 
chicken, sir!” 

“I’ll have lamb! . . .” 

He hurried over his meal. He had little appetite for 
eating, and when he had finished, he went to the smoking- 
room and wrote to Mary. he alarmed if you see 

anything about an Irish Rebellion in the newspapers/* he 
wrote. ^^It will probably be over by to-morrow. Pm 
quite all right. You* re not to worry! ...” And when he 
had finished it he went out and posted it. ‘ ‘ Good Lord ! ’ ’ 


544 


CHANGING WINDS 


he said aloud, as the letter fell into the box, ‘ ‘ I forgot that 
they Ve got hold of the General. I don’t suppose there’ll 
be a collection!” 

He returned to the Club, but he could not keep still. 
There was no one, except the servants and himself, in the 
house, and the emptiness of it made him feel restless. 
Looking out of the window, he saw little girls, like those he 
had seen on Sunday night, running about the Green, busy 
on errands. . . . 

“The Kids’ Eebellion!” he said to himself. . . . 

He left the club, and walked round the Green again, and 
as he passed the College of Surgeons, two men appeared on 
the roof, and proceeded to unfold the Republican tri-col- 
our. They were clumsy, and they fumbled with it, en- 
tangling the cords . . . but at last they got it free, and then 
they hauled it to the top of the flagstaff. The people on 
the pavement below watched it as it fluttered in the light 
breeze, but none of them spoke or cheered. The rebels in 
the Green made no sound either. The Republican flag 
was hauled to its place in silence. 

“They don’t seem very grateful for their deliverance,” 
Henry thought, glancing at the bystanders as he moved up 
the street. There was a crowd of people on the edge of the 
pavement, and he thrust himself into it, and glanced over 
the shoulder of a woman at the ground. There was a mess 
of thick, congealing blood splashed on the road and the 
kerb. 

“That’s where the peeler was killed!” the woman said to 

him. . . . 

He edged out of the crowd as quickly as he could, feel- 
ing sick with horror, and again he felt a bitter anger 
against John Marsh. 

“He was going to Mass every morning, damn him, to 
make sure of his own soul, but he didn’t give the policeman 
time to make any preparation. All his high motives and his 
idealism tumble down to that . . . that mess on the pave- 
ment! . . .” 


CHANGING WINDS 


515 


10 

‘‘But what’s the Government doing?” he wondered. 

There were no police, no soldiers, no authority anywhere. 
It seemed unbelievable that a number of armed youths 
and men could seize a capital city without opposition of any 
kind. He wondered whether there was any truth in the 
rumours that had been floating about the city all day. 
Could it possibly be that the Germans had effected a land- 
ing in Ireland and were marching on the city? Could it 
be true that the British Fleet had been destroyed by the 
German Fleet ? Had the Government thrown up the 
sponge? ... 

He met O’Dowd, an official whom he had seen several 
times at the Club. “Where’s the Government?” he 
asked. . . . 

“Well, to tell you the truth, Quinn, I don’t know. I 
believe there’s an election going on at Trinity College. It’s 
a damned comic affair, this ! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Comic ! ’ ’ 

“Well, I mean to say, it’s a bit rum, isn’t it?” 

11 

He went back to the Club in the evening. There were no 
lights in the streets, and as the dusk settled down, the 
crowds of holiday-makers began to move homewards. 
There were no trams running and few cars to be seen, and 
the tired crowd that had been standing or walking about 
all day, dragged itself home listlessly and heavily. There 
was a sense of foreboding over the people, and some of them 
glanced apprehensively about them. The thing had been 
funny in the daylight, but it was getting dark now . . . 
and who knew what might be lurking in the shadows ? It 
was strange that there were no police to be seen anywhere, 
and stranger still that the soldiers had not appeared. . . . 

There was a Sinn Feiner on guard at the gate near 


546 


CHANGING WINDS 


Henry’s Club, and sitting at the open window, Henry 
could see him very distinctly: a little, red-haired, angry 
man, who chewed his moustache and gaped about him with 
bloodshot eyes. There were other Sinn Feiners with him, 
but he was the most distinctive. He could not stay still: 
he moved about continually, going into the Park and com- 
ing out again, challenging passers-by, sloping his rifle and 
ordering it, and then sloping it again. ‘‘The thing’s get- 
ting on his nerves,” Henry thought, as he watched him; 
and while he watched, an elderly man came past the Shel- 
bourne Hotel in the uniform of a naval officer. The Sinn 
Feiners saw him, and the red-haired man ordered his sub- 
ordinates to arrest him. They ran across the street and 
attempted to seize him, but he resisted, and raised his walk- 
ing stick to defend himself. A rebel caught hold of the 
stick, and the two men stood there, against a gateway, 
struggling to wrest the stick from each other. The up-and- 
down movement of their arms was like the quick, jerky 
movement of figures in a film, and for a moment or two, 
Henry wanted to laugh . . . but the desire died when he 
saw the red-haired man raising his rifle and aiming at the 
old man’s heart. . . . 

“Oh, my God, he’s going to shoot him!” he shouted out, 
jumping up from his seat and leaning out of the window. 
“Don’t shoot him . . . don’t shoot him!” he cried. It 
seemed to him that he was yelling at the top of his voice, 
but that could not have been so, for no one turned to look 
. . . and yet he could hear the red-haired man distinctly. 

“I have ye covered,” he was saying, “an’ I’ll shoot ye 
if ye don’t give in! . . .” 

The old man held on to the stick for a moment or two, and 
then, straightening himself, he surrendered ; and the rebels 
led him into the Park. Through the trees, Henry could 
see him being conducted before a rebel officer who saluted 
him and began to interrogate him. Then the procession 
moved off into the centre of the Park, and the little angry, 
red-haired man returned to the gate. 


CHANGING WINDS 54^7 

‘Hn the morning,” Henry exclaimed to himself, ^‘in the 
morning, that little swine will sing another song!” 

12 

A horse-drawn cab came down the street, and as it ap- 
proached, the guard at the gate turned out, and challenged 
the driver. ‘‘Halt!” they shouted. 

“Ah, glong with you!” the driver replied, whipping 
up his horse. 

“Halt!” they called again, and a third time “Halt!” 
but the driver did not heed them, and then they fired at 
him. . . . There was a clatter of hooves on the street, and 
the horse fell to the ground, striking sparks from the stones 
as it struggled to rise again. The driver did not pause: 
he jumped from his box with amazing celerity and disap- 
peared so swiftly that the rebels could not catch him. And 
while the horse lay struggling on the street, a motor-car 
came by, and again the rebels sent out their challenge, 
and again the challenge was ignored. “Halt! Halt! 
Halt! ...” The chauffeur drove on, and the rebels fired 
on the occupants of the car. There was a swift applica- 
tion of brakes, and the car slithered up against the pave- 
ment . . . and as it slithered, a man stood up beside the 
driver, holding his hand to his side, and yelled, “Oh, I’m 
dead ! I ’m dead ! . . . ” 

The chauffeur hurried away. . . . 

The rebels gathered round the shrieking man. “Why 
didn’t you stop when we challenged you!” they demanded. 

“Aw! Aw! Aw!” he answered. . . . 

“Like a stuck pig!” thought Henry. “Squealing like 
a stuck pig!” 

His head was rolling, but he was able to walk. “He’s 
not much hurt,” Henry murmured to himself, “but he’s 
damned frightened.” 

“Aw, what did ye do it for? Aw! Aw! Aw! . . 

“Take him to the hospital! ...” 


548 


CHANGING WINDS 


They led him a little way towards the hospital of St. 
Vincent de Paul, and then, for some reason, changed their 
minds, and took him into the Park. It was difficult now to 
see what was happening. There was a derelict tram near 
the club, and beyond that, still pawing at the ground, was 
the wounded horse. . . . 

“Why don’t they shoot the poor beast!” Henry ex- 
claimed. 

But it would not enter their minds to put the animal out 
of pain. They were Catholics, and Catholic peoples, the 
world over, are cruel to beasts. Too intent on pitying 
their own souls, to have pity on animals. . . . 

13 

He closed the shutters and turned on the light. ‘ ‘ I won- 
der where John is?” he thought as he did so. “TMs is 
why he couldn’t come to Glendalough with me. What the 
hell does he think he’s going to gain by it?” He glanced 
about the room. “It’s damned odd,” he said aloud, “but 
I don’t feel frightened. I should have thought I’d feel 
scared. ... Of course, as there was going to be a rebel- 
lion, I’m rather glad I’m here to see it!” 

He went to his bedroom and got a pack of patience cards. 

“There’ll be no theatre to-night!” he said. “I think 
I’ll play ‘Miss Milligan.’ ...” 

14 

The silence of the house made him feel restless. 

“I’ll go to bed,” he exclaimed. “I may as well get all 
the sleep I can.” 

He went to his room, and stumbled towards the windows. 

“I’ll close the shutters while I’m undressing,” he went 
on. “I don’t want to be ‘potted’ needlessly!” 

He tried to see into the Park, but the great masses of 
trees that undulated like a rough sea, prevented him from 


CHANGING WINDS 


549 


liDning anything. There were figures at the gate ... on 
guard ! 

“I wonder if that little red-haired man’s still there,” 
he thought. ‘‘Poor devils! Some of them must feel 
damned queer to-night! ...” 

He closed the shutters, and switched the light on, and 
then, when he had undressed he darkened the room again. 
“I must have some air,” he said, opening the shutters. 

He climbed into bed. Now and then a rifle-shot was 
fired, and sometimes there was a succession of shots. . . . 

‘ ‘ In the morning, ’ ’ he said, as he turned on his side and 
closed his eyes, “they’ll be cleared out of that! ...” 


THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 


1 

He awoke suddenly, and sat up in bed. “Good Lord!” 
he exclaimed, “IVe been asleep!” It was still dark, but 
less dark than it was when he came to bed. He could just 
see the time by holding his watch close to his eyes. 
“Four,” he murmured. It was strange that he should 
have slept at all, for there had been spasmodic firing all 
night. He got out of bed, and went across his room to 
the window, and looked out, and as he looked, the wounded 
horse struggled to rise, pawing the ground feebly, and then 
fell over on its side. “It isn’t dead! ...” When he had 
looked at it last, it had been lying very still, and he had 
thought it was dead. 

He looked across the road to the Park gates, but could 
not see any one standing there. “Perhaps they’ve gone!” 
There was a shapeless thing lying on the ground, outside 
the gates, but he could not make out what it was. In the 
dim light, it looked like a great piece of paper . . . the 
debris of a windy day. 

There was no movement anywhere ... the horse was 
still now . . . but now and then a single shot rang out, 
and then came a volley. “You’d think they were just try- 
ing to make a noise! I wonder what’s been happening all 
night,” he said, as he went back to bed. 

2 

He fell asleep again, and when he awoke, wakened by a 
heavier sound of shooting, it was almost six o’clock, and 
it was light. “That must be the soldiers,” he thought, 

550 


CHANGING WINDS 


551 


listening to the heavier rifle fire. He sat up in bed, and 
glanced about the room. “I was an ass not to keep the 
shutters closed,” he said aloud. “A stray bullet might 
have come in here ... I wonder whether the shutters 
would stop a bullet. After all, Bibles do! . . 

He could just see the Republican flag floating from the 
flagstaff on the roof of the College of Surgeons. ‘‘They’re 
still there, then ! ’ ’ And while he sat looking at it, he heard 
the sound of some one, wearing heavy boots, coming down 
the streets, making loud clattering echoes in the silence. 
“That’s funny!” he said. “People are going about al- 
ready. Perhaps it’s over . . . practically over! ...” 

He got out of bed, and as he did so, he heard the sharp 
rattle of rifles, and when the echo of it had ceased, he could 
not hear the noise of heavy treading any more. He stood 
still in the centre of the room, listening, and presently he 
heard a groan. He ran to the window and looked out. In 
the roadway, beneath him, an old man was lying on his 
back, groaning very faintly. 

“They’ve killed him!” Henry murmured, glancing across 
the road at the hotel, from which the sound of firing had 
come. “They didn’t challenge him . . . they just shot 
him !” 

Four times, the old man groaned, and then he died. He 
was lying in the attitude of a young child asleep. One 
leg was outstretched and the other was lightly raised. His 
right arm was lying straight out from his body, and the 
hand was turned up and hollowed. Very easy and nat- 
" ural was his attitude, lying there in the morning light. He 
looked like a labourer. “Going to his work,” I suppose. 
“Thinking little of the rebellion. Just stumping along to 
his job . . . and then! . . .” 

There was a bundle lying by his side, a red handkerchief 
that seemed to be holding food . . . and flowing towards 
it, trickling, so slowly did it move, from his body was a 
little red dribble. . . . 

Henry looked at him with a feeling of curiosity and pity. 


552 


CHANGING WINDS 


He had never seen a man killed before. He had never 
seen any dead person, not even Mrs. Clutters, until his 
father died. He had purposely avoided seeing Mrs. Clut- 
ters’ body . . . something in the thought of death repelled 
him and made him reluctant to look at a corpse, and so, 
when he had been asked if he would like to see Mrs. Clutters, 
he had made some evasive reply. It had been different 
when his father died. He had looked on him, not as a 
dead man, but as his father, still, even in death, his father, 
able to love and be loved. When he thought of death, he 
thought, not of Mr. Quinn, but of Mrs. Clutters, and al- 
ways it seemed to him that the dead were frightful. . . . 
But this old man, a few moments ago intent on getting to 
his work in time, and now, cognisant, perhaps of all the 
mysteries of this world, had nothing frightful about him. 
There was beauty in the way he was lying in the road- 
way ... in that careless, graceful attitude ... as if he 
were gratefully resting after much labour. . . . 

He looked across the roadway, and now it was plain that 
the shapeless thing that had looked in the dim light like 
paper blown to a corner by the wind, was a dead man. He, 
too, was lying on his back, with his legs stretched straight 
out and slightly parted . . . and while Henry looked at 
him, it seemed to him that the man was familiar to him. 
The brown dust-coat he was wearing! . . . And then he 
remembered. It was the red-haired, angry-looking, nerv- 
ous man, who had chewed his moustache and gaped about 
him with bloodshot eyes. . . . 

He dressed, and went downstairs. The servants were 
up, and moving about the house, and one of them came 
to him. 

“Will you have your breakfast now, sir?” she asked, 
and when he had answered that he would, she said, “There’s 
no milk, sir. The milkman didn’t come this morning!” 

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “I’ll have it with 
out ! ’ ’ 

He went to the front of the house, while his breakfast 


CHANGING WINDS 


553 

was being prepared, and looked out of the window. In 
the bushes on the other side of the road, he could see a 
youth, crawling on his stomach, and dragging a rifle after 
him. He raised himself on to his knees, and glanced up 
at the hotel, where there were some soldiers who had been 
brought in during the night, and when he had raised him- 
self, the soldiers in the upper windows saw him, and fired 
on him. He got up and ran across the path towards the 
shelter of the trees, and as he ran, the bullets spattered 
about him. Then he staggered . . . and Henry could not 
see him again. 

3 

An ambulance came and the bodies of the rebel and the 
labourer were put into it and taken away. The horse had 
been hauled to the pavement, and it lay in a great con- 
gealed mess of blood that had poured from a gash in its 
throat. . . . 


4 

Later in the morning, the people began to move about, 
and after a while the streets were full of sightseers. It 
was possible now to learn something of what happened on 
the previous day and during the night. There had been 
fierce fighting in places. Soldiers were hurrying from the 
Curragh, from the North of Ireland, from England. The 
thing was serious . . . the rebels had seized various strate- 
gic points, and were determined to fight hardly. During 
the night, realising that Stephen’s Green was a dangerous 
place to be in, they had left it for the shelter of the College 
of Surgeons. Some of them were still there, sniping from 
safe points. 

Henry went out and wandered about the streets. If there 
were soldiers in Dublin, there were very few, and the rebels 
still had possession of the city. He listened to the com- 
ments of the people who passed him, and as he listened, he 
realised that there was resentment everywhere against the 


554 


CHANGING WINDS 


Sinn Feiners. Behind one of the gates of the Park, a Sinn 
Feiner was lying face downwards in the hole he had made 
to be a trench, and the crowd climbed up the railings to 
gape at him. A youth thrust his way through the people 
and peered at the dead man, and then he turned to the 
crowd and said to them, “Let’s get the poor chap out and 
bury him!” A girl looked at him resentfully, and hur- 
ried to a towsled woman standing on the kerb, and told 
her what the youth had said, and instantly the woman 
rushed at him and hit him about the head and back. “No, 
ye’ll not get him out,” she yelled at him. “Let him lie 
there an’ rot like the poor soldiers!” 

“They forgot, the Sinn Feiners, that these women’s hus- 
bands and sons are at the Front ! ’ ’ Henry thought. 

What madness was it that possessed them to rise? A 
little group of men and boys had set itself against a Power 
in the interests of people who did not desire their services. 
They could not hope to win the fight . . . they had not 
the gratitude or the good wishes of the people for whom 
they were fighting. What were they going to do next? 
They had taken the Post Office and the College of Surgeons 
and other places because there was no one to prevent them 
from taking them . . . but what were they going to do 
next? They could not, even the wildest of them, believe 
that this immunity from attack would last forever. Was 
there one among them with an idea of the future of Ire- 
land, of the complexities of government? . . . 

He wanted to get hold of a leader of them and ask him 
just what he proposed to do with Ireland ? . . . 

5 

The rumours this day were wilder than they were Jon 
Monday. A man assured Henry that the Pope had 
arrived in Ireland on an aeroplane and that Dr. Walsh, 
the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin had committed suicide 
the minute he heard of the outbreak of the Rebellion. Then 


CHANGING WINDS 


555 


the rumour changed, and it was said that the Pope had 
thrown himself from the roof of the Vatican. Lord Wim- 
borne, the Viceroy, had been taken a prisoner, and was now 
interned in Liberty Hall. . . . The Orangemen, sick of 
England, were marching to the support of the Sinn Feiners, 
under the leadership of Mr. Joseph Devlin! Ireland was 
entirely surrounded by German submarines in order to 
prevent British transports from landing troops. . . . 


6 

There was looting in Sackville Street. Henry had made 
his way towards the General Post Office, for he had heard 
that John Marsh was there, and while he stood about, hop- 
ing that he might see him, the looting began. Half -starved 
people swarmed up from the slums, like locusts, and seized 
all they could find. They destroyed things in sheer wan- 
tonness. . . . 

^‘Well, if a city is content to keep such slums as Dublin 
has, it must put up with the consequences 1 ” Henry thought. 
And while he watched, he saw John Marsh going to a shop 
which was being looted. He hauled a hulking lad out of 
the broken window and flung him back into the crowd. 

‘‘Damn you,’’ he shouted, “are you trying to disgrace 
your country?” He pointed his rifle at the crowd. “Ill 
shoot the first one of you that touches a thing ! ’ ’ 

But it was impossible for them to control the looters, and 
while John guarded one shop, the crowd passed on to an- 
other. 

“John!” said Henry, going up to him and touching his 
arm. 

He started and turned round. His face was drawn and 
haggard and very pale. 

“Henry!” he said, smiling. “I wondered who it was. 
I wish you’d gone away when I asked you to go. It wasn’t 
because I wanted to get rid of you, Henry. I wanted you 


556 


CHANGING WINDS 


to be out of this ... so that you could go and get mar- 
ried in peace!” 

“You can’t win, John. You know you can’t win! . . .” 

“I know we can’t win a military success! ...” He 
drew his hand across his eyes. “My God, I’m tired, 
Henry!” he said. “I’m worn out. I haven’t slept since 
Saturday night. ...” 

“John!” 

“Yes, Henry, what is it?” 

“Come away with me. You know you can’t win . . . 
you can’t possibly win. We’ll go over to England to- 
gether. ...” 

“I’m fighting England, Henry, not visiting it!” 

“You can hide there for a while . . . until you can get 
away to France or America!” 

“Go away and leave them now, Henry?” 

“Yes. The longer you hold out, the wwse it’ll be for 
everybody. The people are against you ... I’ve heard 
things to-day that I never expected to hear in Dublin. ...” 

“I know they’re against us. We thought there would 
be more on our side, but that’s all the more reason why 
we should fight. The people are getting too English in 
their ways, Henry . . . they think too much of money. 
All those women in the Combe ... do you know why 
they’re against us? . . . because they can’t get their sepa- 
ration allowances! We won’t win a military success . . . 
we all know that . . . McDonagh and Pearse and Connolly 
and Mineely and all of us . . . we know that . . . but 
we’ll win a spiritual success!” 

“A spiritual success?” 

“Yes. We’ll remind the people that Ireland is not yet 
a nation and that there are Irishmen who are still willing 
to die for their country. They’ve become very English, 
but they’re not altogether English, Henry. They’ve still 
some of the old Irish spirit in them, and we may quicken 
that!” 


CHANGING WINDS 557 

‘‘Nothing will ever convince you, I suppose, that the 
English aren’t a robber race? ...” 

“Nothing. I daresay the mass of the people are decent 
enough, but I don’t know and I don’t care. All that mat- 
ters to me is that my countrymen shall not become like 
them! ...” 

“You’re ruining the work of thirty years, John. Blow- 
ing it up in a childish rage ! . . . ” 

“You always thought I was a fool, Henry, but I don’t 
think as you think. We won the Home Rule Act by fair 
and constitutional means . . . and they’ve done us out of 
it. The Ulster men had only to yell at them, and they gave 
in. Do you think they’ll keep their word after the War?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, I don’t. They’ll use that damned Amending Act 
to cheat us as they’ve cheated us before. No, Henry, this 
is a poor hope, but it is a hope. You see, when we’re beaten 
and those of us who are left alive, surrender, the English 
will be sure to do the right thing . . . from our point of 
view! That’s one of the things we count on. They’ll put 
us down with great firmness. They’ll make an example of 
us. They’ll shoot us, Henry . . . and when they do that, 
we’ll win. We’re not popular now ... oh, I don’t need 
you to tell me that . . . but we’ll be popular then. The 
English will make us popular!” 

“Isn’t it a little mean, John, to hit them when they 
aren’t looking?” 

“Mean! They’ve hit us often enough, haven’t they? 
They got us on the ground when we were sick and kicked 
us. Why shouldn’t we take advantage of them?” 

“The Germans! . . .” 

“Why shouldn’t we go to the Germans, or to any one 
who is willing to help us? Wolfe Tone went to the 
French! . . .” 

“You won’t come away with me?” 

“No. I came here to die, Henry, not to be safe!” 


558 


CHANGING WINDS 


They stood for a few moments in silence, looking at each 
other, and then John put out his hand to Henry who took 
it in his. 

“I must get back now,’’ John said. “Good-bye, Henry. 
I don’t suppose I shall ever see you again. If we lose, you 
and your friends can come and try your way. I’ve al- 
ways wanted to die for Ireland ever since I was able to 
understand anything about my country, and I shall get 
my wish soon. Good-bye, Henry!” 

“Good-bye, John!” 

“I hope you and your wife will be very happy!” He 
made a wry smile, as he went on. “I’m afraid you won’t 
be able to get to England just as soon as you wished. If 
you ’d gone when I asked you to go ! . . . ” 

‘ ‘ I must get back now, ’ ’ he said again. 

“Yes, John!” 

“I’m glad I saw you. I wondered last night where you 
were. ...” 

“And I wondered where you were.” 

“I was here. I’ve been here since Monday morning!” 

He moved a few steps away, and then turned back. 

“I’ve always liked you, Henry,” he said, taking Henry’s 
hand in his, “even when you made me angry. I wish you 
were on our side. ...” 

“I see no sense in this sort of thing, John!” 

“I know you don’t. And perhaps there isn’t any sense 
in it, but that may not matter. It’s something, isn’t it, 
to find men still willing to die for their ideals, even when 
they know they haven’t a chance of success? The Post 
Office is full of young boys, who want nothing better than 
to die for Ireland. Well, that’s something, isn’t it, in 
these times when most of our people aren’t willing to do 
anything but make money? Good-bye again!” 

He went back to the Post Office, very erect and very 
proud and very resolute. 

“By God,” said Henry to himself, “I wish I had the 
heart to feel what he feels!” 


CHANGING WINDS 


559 


7 

He was sitting in the smoking-room of the Club, trying 
to write. He had written to Mary earlier in the evening, 
assuring her of his welfare, and Driffield, a Treasury offi- 
cial, who had come into the Club for a few moments, had 
offered to try and get it put into the special mail ‘‘pouch” 
which was sent from the Castle every day to London. “You 
mustn^t say anything about the Rebellion,” he said. “Just 
say you’re all right. I can’t promise that it’ll go off, but 
I ’ll do my best ! ’ ’ The restless, excited feeling which had 
possessed him since the beginning of the rebellion still held 
him, and he was unable to continue at anything for long. 
All day he had wandered about the city, learning more of 
its backways than he had ever known before. He had 
penetrated more deeply into the slums than he had done 
when he had explored them with Gilbert Farlow, and it 
seemed to him that there was nothing to be done with them 
or with the people in them. They were decaying together, 
and the sooner they decayed, the better would it be for 
Ireland. All his counsels that day were counsels of de- 
spair. What was the good of working and building when 
this was the material out of which a nation must be made ? 
What was the good of trying to make sure foundations 
when impatient, undisciplined people like John Marsh came 
and threw one’s work to the ground? Was it not better 
that every Irishman of alert and vigorous mind should 
leave Ireland to rot, and choose another country where men 
had stability of mind and purpose? . . . 

“But one must go on trying. If the house be pulled 
down, we must build it up again. One must go on try- 
ing. . . .” 

He would get his friends together, and they would plan 
to save what they could from the wreckage. “And then 
we’ll begin again! Whatever happens, we must begin 
I again ! ’ ’ 

, He was tired of playing Patience, tired of reading, and 


560 


CHANGING WINDS 


tired of sitting still. Perhaps, he thought, he could write. 
It would be odd afterwards to think that he had written 
a story during a rebellion. There was a great German 
. . . who was it? . . . Heine or Goethe? . . . Oh, why 
couldn’t he remember names! . . . who had gone on writ- 
ing steadily, though there was battle all about him. . . . 
He settled himself to write, though he had no plan in his 
mind, and as he wrote, he felt that the story, whatever it 
might grow to be, must be comic. “I feel like a clown 
making jokes in the circus while his wife is dying,” he said 
to himself. . . . 

But his restlessness persisted, and after a while he put 
his manuscript aside, and took up a book which he had 
found in the bookcase: William James’s Pragmatism: and 
began to read it. He remembered a discussion of Prag- 
matism by the Improved Tories, when Gilbert had described 
a pragmatist as an unfrocked Jesuit. . . . 

And while he was burrowing into the first chapter, think- 
ing more of James’s graceful style than of his matter, there 
was a great rattle, an incessant hammer-and-rasp noise in 
the street. 

‘‘Good God!” he exclaimed, jumping up and dropping 
the book, “what’s that?” 

Then it ceased, and there was a horrible quietness for 
a few moments, followed by the crack-crack of rifles, and 
then again the ra-ra-ra-rat-rat-rat-rattle-rattle. . . . 

“Machine guns!” he exclaimed. He knew instinctively 
that they were machine guns. “It ... it startles you, 
that noise ! ’ ’ 

It went on, rattling, with little pauses now and then as 
if the gun were taking breath, for an hour or more: a 
paralysing sound, as if some giant were drawing a great 
stick swiftly along iron railings. 

“I think I’d better put the light out,” he said, going 
across the room to where the switch was, and as he went 
there was a cracking sound in the window, and a bullet 
flew across the room and lodged in the wall. . . . 


CHANGING WINDS 


561 


He switched the light off, and stood for a while in the 
dark. Then he opened the door and went out and stood on 
the landing. The servants were sitting huddled together 
on the staircase, nervous looking, indeed, but not frightened. 
It seemed to him to be remarkable that these girls should 
have kept their nerve as finely as they had. He smiled at 
them, as he closed the door behind him. 

“They’re making a lot of noise, aren’t they?” he said. 

^ ‘ Isn ’t it awful, sir ? ” one of them answered. 

He did not speak of the bullet which had come into the 
room. “It must have been a stray,” he thought, “and 
there’s no sense in upsetting them!” 

“The soldiers are firing across the Green,” he said aloud, 
“at the College of Surgeons. I think we’re safe enough 
here, but I’d keep away from the windows! ...” 

“Yes, sir, we are!” 

He went to his room, and sat at the window. At this 
height it was unlikely that any stray bullet would come near 
him. But he could not see any one. He could hear the 
wild-fowl crying in the Park . . . distinctly, in the pause 
of the firing, he could hear a duck’s quack-quack. . . . 

8 

He went to bed, and tried to sleep, but could not. The 
firing from the machine-guns was intermittent now, but it 
still went on, and there was a continuous crackling of rifle- 
fire. Several times he got up and looked out ... he had 
a curious and persistent desire to see whatever was going 
on ... to be in it .. . extraordinarily he was anxious not 
to miss anything. Be was neither afraid nor aware of the 
fact that he was not afraid. He had simply the sensation 
that exciting things were happening, that he wanted to see 
as much of them as possible, that he was excited, that his 
blood was flowing rapidly through his veins, that there was 
something hitting the inside of his head, thumping it. Then 
when he was tired of straining to see into the darkness, he 


562 


CHANGING WINDS 


went back to bed again, and closed his eyes and tried to 
sleep. And sometimes he succeeded in sleeping for a while 
. . . but always the noise of the machine-guns woke 

him. . . . 

He went to the window when the dawn broke, and looked 
across the Green to the College of Surgeons. 

“It’s still flying,” he muttered as he watched the tri- 
colour flowing in the wind. 


9 

And now the Eebellion began to bore him. He could 
not work, and the walks he could take were circumscribed. 
He walked down to Trinity College and stood there, watch- 
ing the soldiers on the roof of the College as they fired up 
Dame Street to where some Sinn Feiners were in occupa- 
tion of a newspaper office, or along Westmoreland Street 
towards the Post Office. Wherever he went, there was the 
sound of bullets being fired . . . but after a while, the 
sound ceased to affect him. There were snipers on many 
roofs . . . and people had been killed by stray bullets . . . 
but, although the sudden crack of a rifle overhead made him 
jump, the boredom grew and increased. He wanted to 
get on with his work. . . . 

The soldiers were pouring into Dublin now . . . more 
and more of them. 

‘ ‘ It ’ll be over soon, ’ ’ he said to himself. 

It seemed to him then that the thing he would remember 
always was the dead horse which still lay on the pavement, 
becoming more and more offensive. Wherever he went, 
he met people who said to him, “Have you seen the dead 
horse?” Impossible to forget the corrupting beast, im- 
possible to refrain from saying too, “Have you seen the 
dead horse?” Magnify that immensely, increase enor- 
mously the noise, and one had the War! Noise and stench 
and dead men and boredom 1 . . . 

He wandered about the streets, seeing the same people, 


CHANGING WINDS 


563 


listening to the same statements, making the same remarks, 
wondering vaguely about food. He had seen high officials 
carrying loaves under their arms, and little jugs of 

milk. . . . 

wish to God it was over,” he exclaimed. ”I’m sick 
of this . . . idleness!” 

He spoke to a soldier in Merrion Square. “Do you like 
Dublin?” he said. 

“Oh, fine!” he answered. “We’ve been treated cham- 
pion. I ’aven’t seen much of it yet, of course,” he went 
on. “I’ve been ’ere ever since I landed!” He pointed 
to the pavement. “But I know this bit damn well. You 
know,” he went on, “we thought we was in France when 
we arrived ’ere. Couldn’t make it out when we saw all 
the signs in English. I says to a chap, as we was walking 
along, ‘ ’I,” I says, ‘is this Boolone?’ ‘Naow,’ ’e says, ‘it’s 
Ireland.’ ” 

“And what did you say?” said Henry. 

“I said ‘Blimey!’ ” He moved to the kerb as the sol- 
dier further along the street called “Pass these men along” 
and when he had called the warning to the next soldier, he 
returned to Henry. “I say,” he said, “wot are these Sinn 
Feiners? I mean to say ’oo are they? Are they Irish, 
too?” 

Henry tried to explain who the Sinn Feiners were. 

“But wot they want to do? Wot’s the point of all this 
. . . this ’umbuggin’ about? We don’t want to fight Irish 
people ... we want to fight Germans! ...” He looked 
about for a moment, and then added, as if to clinch his 
statement, “I mean to say, I know an Irish chap ... ’e’s 
a friend of mine . . . but I don ’t know no bloody Germans, 
an’ wot’s more I wouldn’t know them neither . . . dirty 
lot, I calls ’em!” 

“You know,” he went on, “this is about the ’ottest bit 
of work a chap could ’ave to do. These snipers, you know, 
they get on your nerves. I mean to say, ’ere you are, 
standin’ ’ere, you might say, in the dark an’ suddenly a 


564 


CHANGING WINDS 


bullet damn near ’its you ... or mebbe it does ’it you 
. . . one of our chaps was killed in front of that ’ouse last 
night . . . they been swillin’ the blood away, see! . . .’' 
Henry looked across the road to where a man was vigor- 
i)usly brooming the wet pavement. The soldier proceeded : 
‘‘Well, you don’t know where it’s cornin’ from. ’E’s up 
on one of these ’ere roofs, ’idin’, an’ you’re down ’ere . . . 
exposed. ’E kneels be’ind the parapet, an’ ’as a shot at 
you, an’ then ’e ’ops along the roof to another place, an’ 
’as another shot at you. . . . You don’t ’alf begin to feel a 
bit jiggery when that’s ’appening’. ...” 

10 

There was no malice in that soldier. He was puzzled, 
as puzzled as he would have been if his brother had sud- 
denly seized a rifle and lain in wait for him. He looked 
upon the Irish as his comrades, not his enemies. “I mean 
to say, we’re all the same, I mean to say! ...” He had 
been in camp at Watford. “We was in a picture-palace, 
me an’ my pal ... a whole lot of us was there . . . and 
then a message was put on the screen: ‘All the Dashes 
report at once ! ’ I never thought nothink of it you know. 
Of course, I went all right. But I thought it was just one 
of these bloomin’ spoof entrainments. They done that to 
us before . . . two or three times . . . just to see ’ow 
quick they could do it ... an’ I was gettin’ ’a bit fed-up 
with it. I’d said ‘Good-bye’ to a girl three times . . . 
an ’ it was gettin ’ a bit monotonous. ‘ At it again, ’ I says to 
my pal, as we hooked back to the camp, but when we was in 
the train, an’ it didn’t stop an’ go back again, I says to 
’im, ‘ ’Illoa,’ I says, ‘we’re off!’ An’ I ’adn’t said ‘Good- 
bye’ to ’er this time. I thought to myself, ‘I won’t make 
a bloomin’ ass of myself this time !’ An’ there we was . . . 
off at last! ‘This is a nice-old- ’ow-d’ye-do!’ I says. I 
didn’t want the girl to think I was ’oppin’ it like that 
. . . sayin’ nothink or anythink. . . . When we got to 


CHANGING WINDS 


565 


Kingstown an’ ’eard we was in Ireland . . . well, I mean 
to say, it surprised me, I tell you. ... Wot I can’t make 
out is, wot’s it all about? I mean to say, wot do these 
chaps want?” 

‘ ‘ They want to be free ! . . . ” 

“But ain’t they free? I mean to say, ain’t they as free 
as me ? ” 

“They don’t think so.” 

“Well, wot can I do that they can’t do?” 

Henry did not know. “You ast me any think,” the sol- 
dier went on, “they’re a lot freer ’n wot we are. I mean 
to say, we got conscription in our country, but they ain’t 
got it ’ere. ...” 

There was another interruption, to enable a motor-cyclist 
to pass along. When he returned to Henry, he said, “You 
know, when we got ’ere, an’ all the people come out their 
’ouses an’ treated us like their long-lost brother, we 
couldn’t make it out at all, an’ when we ’eard about the 
Sinn Feiners, we didn’t know wot to think. I mean to 
say, we didn’t know ’oo they was. One of our chaps 
thought they was black . . . you know . . . niggers . . . 
but I told ’im not to be a bloody fool. ‘They don’t ’ave 
niggers in Ireland,’ I says, ‘They’re the same as us,’ I 
says. ‘I mean to say . . . they’re white! . . .’ ” 

12 

He wrote to Mary again, hoping that he would be able to 
get it into the Castle “pouch,” and then he went to seek 
for Driffield who had promised to try and send his previous 
letter to England by the same means, and Driffield, very 
dubious, took the letter and said he would do what he could. 
She would be full of alarm ... he did not know whether 
she had received his messages, and, of course, he had re- 
ceived none from her. It was Thursday now, and still 
the rebellion was not suppressed. The city was full of 
dead and wounded men and women, and there was diffi- 


566 


CHANGING WINDS 


culty about burial. He thought of people in the first grief 
for their dead, unwilling that the hour of interment should 
come . . . and then, when it came, and there could not be 
interment, suddenly finding their grief turned to consterna- 
tion, and what had been the object of mourning love, be- 
come abhorrent, so that there was an unquenchable desire, 
a craving that it might be taken away. . . . 

It was dangerous to be out of doors after seven o’clock, 
and so, since no one came to the Club, and it was impos- 
sible to read or write, he spent most of the evening in 
brooding. ... If the rebellion were not speedily sup- 
pressed, it might be impossible for him to get to Bovey- 
hayne in time for his marriage . . . but the rebellion could 
not last very long now, and at worst his marriage would 
only be postponed a little while. His mind moved from 
thought to thought, from Mary to Gilbert and Ninian, then 
to John Marsh and his father and to the boy in Stephen’s 
Green who had been told to dig a trench, but thought that 
he was digging his grave . . . and then, inconsequently, 
he saw in his imagination the ridiculous figure of a looter 
whom he had seen in Sackville Street, swaggering up and 
down, clothed in evening dress, and carrying a lady’s sun- 
shade. He had a panama hat on his head, and was wear- 
ing very thick-soled brown boots . . . and loosely tied 
about his waist were a pair of corsets. . . . 

He laughed at the remembrance, and as he laughed, he 
looked towards the window, and saw a great red glare in 
the sky. From the centre of the city, flames were reaching 
up, vast and red and terrible. . . . 

‘‘Good God!” he exclaimed, “the place is on fire!” 

13 

The fire continued during the whole of the next day. It 
was impossible to get near the burning buildings, and so, 
though people knew of the fire, they did not know of its 
extent. The south side of the city, separated from the 


CHANGING WINDS 


567 


north, where the fire was, by the river, knew nothing of 
what was happening across the Liftey. It seemed now, 
this horror following on the horror of the fighting, that 
Dublin must be destroyed, that nothing could save it from 
the flames. . . . Then, by what efforts no one can ever 
realise, the fire was controlled, and the reddened sky be- 
came dark, and frightened citizens went to their beds to 
such sleep as they could obtain. 

14 

The next day, the Rebellion collapsed. Henry had walked 
out of Dublin, for it was easier now to move about, and 
coming back in the afternoon, suddenly felt that the Re- 
bellion was over. A man came cycling past at a great pace, 
and as he went by, he shouted to Henry, “They’ve sur- 
rendered!” and then was gone. There was a cooler feel 
in the air. It seemed to him that a great tension had been 
relaxed . . . that, after a day oT intolerable heat, there had 
come an evening of cool winds. As he approached the city, 
he could see groups of people standing about in the road, 
and he went to one of them, and asked if the news were 
true. 

“Some of them’s surrendered,” he was told, “but there’s 
a lot of snipers still about ! ’ ’ 

They could hear desultory firing as they spoke. 

“Ah, they’ll give in quick enough now,” a man said. 
“Sure, they can’t hold out any longer!” 

He hurried back to the city, and when he reached the 
Club, he saw that the tri-colour was no longer flying over 
the College of Surgeons. 


THE FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 


1 

On Sunday morning, he met Lander, who had a military 
pass, and together they went to Sackville Street. . . . 
There were some who had said that this was the proudest 
street in the world. It had little pride now. Where there 
had been shops and hotels, there were now heaps of rubble 
and calcined bricks. The street was covered with grey ash 
that was still hot, and one had to walk warily lest one’s 
feet should be burnt. The Post Office still stood, but the 
roof was gone and the inside of it was empty : a hulk, a dis- 
embowelled carcase. . . . 

‘ ‘ MacDonagh and Pearse and Connolly have been taken, ’ ’ 
said Lander. “They say Connolly’s badly wounded. . . .” 

“Have you heard anything of ... of John Marsh?” 

“Yes. He’s dead. They say he was killed soon after 
the fighting began ... in the street ! . . . ” 

Henry did not speak. He glanced about him at the 
ruin and wreck of a city which, though it had many times 
filled him with anger, yet filled him also with love; and 
for a while he could not see clearly. . . . Somewhere in 
this street, John Marsh had been killed. He had died, as 
he had desired, for Ireland, and a man can do no more 
than give his life for his country . . . but what was the 
good of his dying? It was not enough that a man should 
die . . . he must also die well and to purpose. Oh, in- 
deed, John had believed that such a death as this would be 
a good death, to much purpose, but it is not the dead who 
can judge of that ... it is the living to whom now and 
forever is the task of judging what the dead have done. 

568 


CHANGING WINDS 569 

‘ 'It’s a pity,” said Lander, "that the slums weren’t de- 
stroyed, too! . . 

"Perhaps,” Henry answered, "we can build a finer city 
after this!” 

"Perhaps,” said Lander dubiously, for Lander knew 
the ways of men and had small faith in them. 

2 

They walked along the quays until they reached the 
Four Courts, and while they were standing there, a sickly 
woman, with a fretful, whining voice, plucked at Henry’s 
arm. 

"Is it over, mister?” she said, and when he nodded his 
head, she turned away, exclaiming fervently, "Oh, thanks 
be to the Holy Mother of God!” 

"The Holy Mother of God had damned little to do with 
it,” Henry said to Lander. "It was machine guns. . . .” 


3 

Lander had obtained a permit for him, so that he could go 
to England, and in a little while, he would leave the Club 
and go to Westland Row to catch the train to Kingstown. 
There was a strange quietness in his heart. He had lived 
through a terror and had not been afraid. He had seen 
men immolating themselves gladly because they had be- 
lieved that by so doing they would make their country a 
finer one to live in. 

"It was the wrong way,” he said to himself, "but in the 
end, nothing matters but that a man shall offer his life for 
his belief!” 

Gilbert Farlow and Ninian Graham had not sought, as 
he had sought, to escape from destiny or to elude death. 
It was fore-ordained that old men would make wars and 
that young men would pay the price of them . . . and it 
is of no use to try to save oneself. John Marsh, too, had 


570 


CHANGING WINDS 


had to pay for the incompetence and folly of old men who 
had wrangled and made bitterness. . . . And now, in his 
turn, he must pay the price, too. One must die . . . in 
that there is no choice . . . but one may die finely or 
one may die meanly . . . and in that there is choice. Gil- 
bert and Ninian and John, each in his way\had died finely. 
It might have been that he would have died meanly in Dub- 
lin, casually killed, for no purpose, for no cause. . . . Well, 
he had not been killed meanly. There was still time for 
him to live on the level of his friends. If youth has had 
committed to it the task of redeeming the world from the 
follies of the Old, Youth must not shrink from the labour, 
even though it may feel that the Old should redeem them- 
selves. . . . 

He would go to Boveyhayne and marry IMary, and then 
he would take her to his home ... he must do that . . . 
and when he had given his house to her, he would enlist 
as a soldier. “Life isn’t worth while, if one is afraid to 
lose it ... a year or two more, what do they matter if a 
job be shirked?” “It isn’t the time one lives that mat- 
ters,” he went on, “it’s what one does in the time!” 

4 

As the mail-boat steamed out of the harbour, he climbed 
to the top deck and stood there gazing back at the shore. 
Exquisitely beautiful, Ireland looked in the evening glow. 
Up the river, in an opal mist, he could see Dublin, still sore 
from her latest wounds, and here close at hand, he saw the 
waves of mountains reaching far inland, each mountain 
shining in the light with a great mingling of colours. Beau- 
tiful, but more than beautiful! Other lands had beauty, 
too, more beauty, perhaps, than Ireland, but if he were 
leaving them as he was now leaving Ireland, he should not 
feel the grief that he now felt. This was his land ... his 
own country . . . and the elements which had been min- 
gled to make it, had been mingled also to make him, and 


CHANGING WINDS 


571 


he and it were one. It was strange that he should carry 
so heavy a heart to Boveyhayne, when he should have gone 
there gladly . . . but it was not of j\lary or his marriage 
that he was then thinking. It was of the farewell he was 
making to this old city which had known much grief and 
many troubles. When he returned to Ireland he would 
go straight to Ballymartin, by Belfast, from England. He 
would not see Dublin again. Firmly fixed in his mind, 
was that belief. He would serve . . . and he would die. 
Foolish, he told himself, to think like that, but, even while 
he was rebuking himself, the thought thrust itself into his 
mind again. . . . 


5 

The boat was almost out of sight of land. He had stood 
at the end of the deck, gazing back at Ireland until only 
the clouded head of a mountain could be seen, and then 
that too had been hidden. He turned and looked forward, 
and as he did so, he saw in the distance, low in the sea, 
the hulls of three ships of war. The mail-boat slowed down, 
as they approached, to let them pass. Naked and lithe, 
they looked, as they thrust their bodies through the sea, 
sending the water up from their bows in shining arches. 
He could see the men standing about the decks, looking 
steadily ahead . . . and then the war-ships passed on to 
their work, and the mail-boat gathered up speed and 
plunged on towards Wales. Over there, he thought, some- 
where in that haze, is England, and beyond England, 
France and Flanders and the fields of blood and pain. . . . 


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THE PUBLIC LIBRARY 


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Ail losses or injuries beyond reasonable wear, 
however caused must be promptly adjusted by the 
person to whom the book is charged, ^ 

Fine for over detention, two cents a day 
(Sunday excluded.) 

Books v/ill be issued and Received from 9 a. m . 
to 9 p. m. (Sundays, July 4, December 25, ex- 


KEEP YOUR CARD IN THIS POCKET 


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